NEW YORK — A New York police transit officer and his fiancée face murder charges after the officer’s 8-year-old boy froze to death, according to WNBC.
NYPD transit officer Michael Valva, 40, and Angela Pollina, 42, are charged with the second-degree murder of Thomas Valva. They pleaded not guilty Friday.
“I just really want justice for my son,” the boy’s mother, Justyna Valva, told WNBC. “He deserves it. This should never have happened.”
The station reports the boy was left in an unheated garage overnight as temperates dropped as low as 19 degrees.
Thomas Valva was 76 degrees as doctors tried, unsuccessfully, to save him.
On Jan. 17, officers responded to a report of a boy unconscious in the driveway.
Michael Valva said his son was heading for his school bus when he fell and passed out.
Valva was taking life-saving measures when police arrived.
The boy died at the hospital.
“The medical examiner has ruled it a homicide with a major contributing factor of hypothermia,” Suffolk County Police Chief Geraldine Hart said to WNBC. “We believe certainly that Thomas was kept in the garage overnight preceding his death.”
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