Michael Valva’s ex Angela Pollina found guilty of muder

Angela Pollina was found guilty Friday of second-degree murder and child endangerment in the horrifying death of her ex-fiancé’s 8-year-old son.

The bombshell verdict is the latest update in a grim saga that first grabbed headlines three years ago after the death of Thomas Valva at Long Island Community Hospital Jan. 17, 2020.

At the time of the little boy’s death, Pollina, 45, was engaged to and living with Thomas’ father, former NYPD officer Michael Valva.

Valva, 43, was convicted of murder last year in the troubling case, and sentenced to 25 years to life behind bars.

During the emotional trial, Pollina, 45, admitted she forced Thomas and his older brother, Anthony, to sleep in the freezing garage of the twisted couple’s Center Moriches home the night before the child’s death.

“I put them in the garage. It was horrible. Yes, I did … I exiled them,” she said.

At the time of his death, prosecutors said, Thomas’s body temperature had fallen to nearly 76 degrees. He also had a head injury, a chronic kidney infection from holding in his urine, sunken hips, alopecia and no body fat.

While Pollina’s lawyers tried to shift the onus of Thomas’s horrific death onto his father, she confessed on the stand to deleting incriminating footage from the family’s Nest camera in an effort to protect her then-beau.

Witness Tina Licari, a former piano teacher of Pollina’s daughter, also testified Pollina was prone to “vicious outbursts,” and that both she and Valva mocked Thomas for his autism.

“‘That’s right because you can’t talk,’” Licari recalled Pollina screaming at the 8-year-old boy on one occasion.

In closing arguments, Pollina’s defense attorney Matthew Tuohy dismissed the idea that Pollina’s heartless behavior contributed directly to the boy’s death.

“Yeah, she was a bad person before … but not on that day. She wanted the boys exiled to the garage. She got up and owned it, she said … it was wrong,” he reasoned.

“We don’t convict people because they’re bitches,” he concluded to the shocked courtroom.

Assistant District Attorney Kerriann Kelly, however, showed no patience with Pollina’s stone-faced excuses.

“[Pollina] forced him out into the cold! Thomas was tortured and died for the sin of being autistic,” Kelly argued.

“[Thomas] was not allowed in the house, not allowed to use a bathroom. That was all because of this defendant.”

During deliberations, jurors asked to re-hear former Suffolk County Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Caplan’s testimony about Thomas’ autopsy, which found the youngster succumbed to Stage 4 hypothermia, resulting in multi-organ failure.

The jurors also asked for clarification about the meaning of depraved indifference.