The “emaciated” 8-year-old son of ex-NYPD cop Michael Valva was so uncared for at residence, he needed to eat crumbs off the schoolhouse ground, a Lengthy Island instructor sobbed as she testified on the disgraced officer’s homicide trial Monday.
Thomas Valva, who was autistic, had instructed staffers at East Moriches Elementary Faculty that he was hungry so many instances, second-grade instructor Michelle Cagliano started to maintain a journal each time he requested for the meals, she instructed jurors via tears, Newsday reported.
“He was so skinny,” Cagliano testified. “I might really feel the bones in his physique.”
She stated she would ship Thomas to the varsity cafeteria for breakfast or for granola bars and different snacks to quell his starvation.
When the boy dirty his pants in September 2018 after Cagliano gave him a pear and crackers as a snack, Valva’s irate then-fiancée, Angela Pollina, blamed her for the accident.
“She was not proud of me,” Cagliano testified.
She stated Valva then chastised her to not give Thomas snacks, claiming the kid was a liar who manipulated lecturers into giving him meals, the outlet reported.
The teenager gained weight and his conduct improved in November 2018, however by January 2019 he was once more “very, very skinny, very emaciated, very hungry,” Cagliano testified.
Valva, 43, is now on trial on homicide expenses for allegedly letting Thomas freeze to demise by locking the kid in an unheated storage within the household residence he shared with Pollina. Thomas’ brother Anthony, then 10, survived the vicious punishment.
Valva and Pollina, 45, are being tried individually within the tragic boy’s January 2020 demise from hypothermia.
Final week, the varsity’s principal testified that educators turned so anxious in regards to the boys’ security — and so weary of their father rebuffing their inquiries — that they flooded a Baby Protecting Companies hotline in a determined try to get them assist.
“We felt as a workforce we weren't getting the outcomes we wished to see,” principal Edward Schneyer testified. “We determined as a workforce we have been going to only flood the CPS hotline with calls.”
On Jan. 17, 2020, cops have been known as to the Valva residence and located Thomas unresponsive.
Valva claimed the boy had fallen however confirmed no emotion as paramedics labored in useless to attempt to save his younger son’s life, EMTs testified on the trial.
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