A former New York police officer was sentenced this Thursday to between 25 years in prison and life for having let his autistic son freeze to death when he was 8 years old, after force him to sleep a whole winter night in a garagereports the local press.
The boy Thomas and his brother, both autistic, suffered frequent abuse by their father and the latter’s lover, Angela Pollina – who will later be tried in February for "second degree murder"-, and children were often sent to school undernourished, poorly dressed, and with bruises on their bodies.
On the day of the events, in January 2020, the boy had spent the whole night, with temperatures below zero, in the garage of his house, and his father found him in the morning numb, but since he had urinated on himself, he ordered him to undress, after which the child fell to the ground, according to the audios heard during the trial.
Even seeing him in that state, Michael Valva took an hour to call the emergency services (911), so when the boy arrived at the hospital, he was already dead.
The prosecutor said today in delivering the verdict that this was "one of the most difficult and heartbreaking cases I had seen in my thirty year career".
Although Valva had been indifferent during the six weeks that the trial lasted, as described by the New York Times, today he appeared dejected, and with a broken voice he read some words in which he highlighted feeling "ashamed" Y "regretful" for what happened, in addition to insisting that "loved" to Thomas with all her heart.
