Valva case: Angela Pollina 'did nothing' to save Thomas' life, prosecutor tells jury; defense says she played no role in boy's death

Angela Pollina was “fully aware” that 8-year-old Thomas Valva was suffering from hypothermia the morning he died, but didn’t try to save him as the boy’s father hosed him down with cold water in the backyard on a freezing winter morning after the boy spent the night in an unheated Center Moriches garage, a Suffolk prosecutor said Monday.

“She did nothing,” prosecutor James Scahill told the jury during opening statements in Pollina's Riverhead murder trial. “Nothing to save his life. Nothing to stop it. She did nothing.”

But Pollina’s defense attorney, Matthew Tuohy, said it was Pollina’s then-fiance, Michael Valva, an ex-NYPD officer who last year was convicted of killing Thomas, who is responsible for his death.

While Pollina pronounced Thomas as “hypothermic” when one of her daughters questioned why the child couldn’t walk the day that he died on Jan. 17, 2020, according to an audio recording from that morning, it was Valva who placed Thomas and his older brother, Anthony, in the garage the night before and then hosed Thomas down outside, Tuohy argued.

“Angela Pollina had nothing to do with the murder of this boy. Nothing,” said Tuohy, who said of her comments that Thomas was hypothermic: “That’s an observation. She’s not a doctor.”

The prosecution and the defense presented those competing narratives to the jury Monday in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead. Five witnesses testified following opening statements, including three members of the Suffolk police department and a paramedic and doctor who treated Thomas on the day he died. 

Pollina, 45, has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder and four counts of endangering the welfare of a child in the death of Thomas and the alleged abuse of Anthony, then 10 years old.

A Suffolk jury last year convicted Michael Valva, 43, of second-degree murder in Thomas’ death. Valva is incarcerated in an upstate prison near the Canadian border serving a sentence of 25 years to life.

Pollina, who cried at times during her attorney’s presentation and also when prosecutors played Valva’s call to 911 on the day Thomas died, briefly looked to the back of the courtroom where her sister and mother sat.

“It’s a difficult time,” said her sister, Lucia Pollina, who said she was there to support her sister. “It’s hard. We never imagined. And I’m tired of people saying we knew."

Scahill, in his opening statement, said the boys suffered years of abuse at the hands of Pollina, who forced them to sleep in the garage because both boys struggled with bed wetting, which he said “infuriated” her. He described Pollina’s treatment of the two boys, who were both diagnosed with autism, as “evil, wicked and inhumane.”

Pollina was the “house disciplinarian” for the blended family where the couple lived with Thomas and his two brothers, as well as Pollina’s three daughters.

“She couldn’t stand that Anthony and Thomas suffered from autism,” said Scahill, who underscored the parental role Pollina played in the boys’ lives, despite not being married to their father. “She demanded that the boys be exiled to the garage.”

Valva and Pollina were a team because the boys’ father worked long hours as an NYPD officer and she was “often the sole caregiver” for his sons. Scahill said she insisted the boys call her “mom,” they attended parent-teacher conferences together and annually shared a Christmas card with all six children.

“They sometimes referred to themselves as some type of modern-day Brady Bunch,” Scahill said. 

According to text messages between Pollina and Valva, Pollina first demanded the boys sleep on pee pads — ones typically used to train puppies — in their bedroom, before moving them outside in a tent on the backyard patio and then to the unheated concrete floor of the garage, Scahill said.

At times, the prosecutor said, Valva argued to bring his boys inside the house.

“Michael Valva is pleading with Angela Pollina to stop this madness … something that she flatly refused,” said Scahill.

Tuohy, who told the jury his client will testify in her own defense, said Polina will be “transparent about the mistakes that were made” with Thomas and Anthony.

“She’s going to get up and own up to everything,” said Tuohy. “She’s going to get up and testify and admit to everything she did … She’s going to tell you that she had nothing to do with the death of this boy.”

Tuohy said many of the witnesses that the jury will hear from — police officers, teachers and medical professionals — are telling the truth, but also speculating.

“The father, Mr. Valva, committed the acts,” said Tuohy. “He did it. It’s clear. Michael Valva did it.”

Tuohy accused the prosecution of relying on Pollina’s prior bad behavior — to which, he said, “she’s gonna own up to” — to convict her of murder when she had very little physical contact with Thomas on the day he died, Tuohy said.

“It was Mr. Valva who put the boys in the garage — not Miss Pollina,” said Tuohy.

On the morning, Thomas died, “woke up in physical agony,” Scahill said, as he was already suffering from a chronic kidney infection and other issues.

Pollina was in the kitchen as Valva yelled to her that Thomas “face-planted” and called his son an idiot and slob while using expletives, Scahill told the jury.

Valva slapped Thomas several times and shouted over and over again “are you alive?” as the boy was “in the throes of death” as he suffered through late-stage hypothermia, Scahill said.

Pollina told her daughter, according to the recording, that Thomas couldn’t walk “because he's hypothermic. Hypothermic means you're freezing. Washing yourself in cold water when it's freezing outside, you get hypothermic." 

Pollina was “fully aware” of Thomas’ plight, but “did not nothing to help him,” Scahill told jurors.

Pollina’s home surveillance system, which consisted of video cameras in several rooms of their home, played a key role at Valva’s trial, providing the prosecution with video evidence of the boys’ treatment — and what Pollina and Valva said.

“He couldn’t get up because … Thomas Valva was in the throes of death,” Scahill told the jury.

On that morning, Pollina “knew the grave risk of death or physical injury and knowingly disregarded it,” Scahill told the jury, mirroring the language of the elements of the depraved indifference murder charge.

But Tuohy said his client showed care for Thomas by allegedly bringing Thomas a blanket while his father performed CPR. Prosecutors have said Pollina and Valva denied Thomas and Anthony blankets, pillows or a mattress.

Twelve days before Thomas died, according to prosecutors, Pollina chastised Thomas in a text message to Valva, after she watched the child take a towel from a dirty clothes hamper to cover himself on a night when it was just 33 degrees.

Witnesses Dr. Michael Volpe, an emergency room physician at Long Island Community Hospital in Patchogue, where Thomas was pronounced dead, Erin Lambert, a paramedic who treated Thomas, and a Suffolk police officer, each testified that they thought Thomas was already dead when they first saw him.

Lambert’s voice cracked with emotion at times as she spoke of treating Thomas, who she said “showed no signs of life" from the time she arrived.

Asked by Assistant District Attorney Kerriann Kelly why the treatment continued, Lambert said, “you do everything possible, especially for a child.”

Thomas died of hypothermia. His body temperature just minutes before his death was 76.1 degrees.

“He was dead,” Lambert said. “There was no pulse. No breathing. No movement.”