Angela Valle can hardly stand the sight of her reflection in the mirror.
It’s been eight weeks since her ex-boyfriend allegedly shattered her skull with an ax, killed her best friend and left her 4-year-old daughter with memories of carnage police described as “brutal . . . vicious and terrible.”
Valle’s hospital-shaved head and the wound that stretches from her right temple to the back of her skull are constant reminders of the night of April 19, Valle’s mother, Jessica Cruz, told The Post.
“It’s not the hair,” Cruz said. “Just looking at what he did — she just keeps asking why? Why would he do this?
And we tell her the only one who knows that is him. I think at this point we wish to know why.”
In a series of interviews, Cruz, 40, described the night Valle’s ex, Jerry Brown, tortured her 21-year-old daughter and her friend, Savannah Rivera in Brooklyn, recounting details Angela shared after waking up from the coma caused by brain swelling following the ax attack.
“She remembers him just swinging it back and forth and him telling her and Savannah to lay their heads back on the sofa,” Cruz said. “They were scared and holding each other.”
Angela told her mother: “I remember blocking my face and him telling me, ‘Put your hands down or I’m going to crack your skull.’ ”
“She doesn’t remember anything else,” Cruz said. “When she woke up, that’s when she saw Savannah on the floor.”
Rivera, 20, was nearly decapitated.
Cruz also revealed that as the bloody assault unfolded in the eighth-floor apartment in the Bushwick Houses, Valle’s 4-year-old daughter witnessed portions of the horror.
“Unfortunately she did see stuff . . . she has mentioned a few times since this happened ‘him stabbing mommy,’ ” said Cruz, who also lived in the apartment. “So right now we are getting therapy for the baby.”
Valle is wracked with grief over the death of the friend she’d known since elementary school, Cruz said. The two had only recently rekindled their friendship after a falling out.
“The cops had to tell her Savannah didn’t make it,” Cruz said. “She took it really, really hard. This is one of her best friends.”
Cruz spoke to The Post on Friday outside the cemetery where Rivera is buried. Valle declined to be interviewed.
“She’s not ready yet,” said Cruz.
The families of Rivera and Valle comforted each other at Brown’s arraignment in Brooklyn criminal court recently, Cruz said.
“We hugged and cried, and [Rivera’s grandmother] said she had no hard feelings for my daughter and the one that needs to pay is the one that did it,” Cruz said.
Cruz said her daughter still hasn’t said what exactly precipitated the attack, but she had broken up with Brown, 34, whom she had long feared for his angry and controlling ways, just days before.
The controlling Brown had a key to the apartment in the NYCHA complex, Cruz said. “He took her keys at one point,” Cruz recalled. “Every time she would go outside, he would ask, ‘Where are you going? Who are you going to be with?’ ”
The young mother told Cruz she was too afraid to report Brown’s abuse to the police.
“He did hold her hostage at home at one point and stabbed her, I believe in the back of the neck,” Cruz said.
“And of course he did that when I wasn’t home and when the baby wasn’t home.
“At some point he threatened to burn down the apartment. He moved a refrigerator in front of the door and turned on the gas stove.”
“That’s when she decided, ‘I’m done,’ ” Cruz said.
His response to the breakup was a chilling omen. “He told her, ‘If you’re not going to be with me, you won’t be with anyone,’ ” Cruz said.
Brown — who called himself the “Grim Creepa” on social media — had alluded to a sick fantasy before. “He did tell her, ‘I’ve always wanted to make a horror movie,’ ” Cruz said.
He bought the weapon for his twisted plan weeks prior to the rampage, Cruz said.
“He brought [the ax] to the house, and he told her he was planning to do construction and that’s why he bought it,” Cruz said. “He told her, ‘If you’re afraid, you can hide it.’ She told me she hid it in [her] room and he had seen where.”
Police found the bloodied ax in the building’s trash compactor shortly after the attack.
Based on Valle’s account of the torture and the numerous small stab wounds, Cruz believes “he just played with her and her friend that day,” she said.
“It’s like every day she discovers a new stab wound . . . like he was poking her with the knife,” Cruz said.
Valle awoke around 1:30 a.m., after Brown allegedly delivered the near-fatal ax blow to her head, Cruz said.
She stumbled down the stairs and flagged the first car she saw, an Uber, for help, Cruz said. The Uber driver reportedly called 911. This debunks previous reports that Valle called the Uber herself.
Valle was released about two weeks ago from Elmhurst Hospital, where she was treated for the ax wound to her head, fractured ribs, collapsed lungs and multiple stab wounds.
She is still experiencing numbness on the left side of her face and upper-left side of her body and will undergo physical therapy to regain feeling.
She also needs another surgery to place a plate in her head where portions of her skull used to be.
Cruz said she was in a coma for about 10 days and almost didn’t survive. “She had to be revived twice,” Cruz said.
Brown turned himself in to police hours after the attack and was charged with second-degree murder, attempted murder and two counts of weapon possession.
While he awaits trial on Rikers Island, Valle is holed up out of state, returning only for medical appointments.
“She is just so afraid. She knows he knows a lot of people,” Cruz said. “But she is away from here. That was my main concern.”
Cruz went to the apartment for the first time since the attack on Wednesday. Her couch was still stained with blood.
“I broke down just walking in there,” she said. “Having to think about what my daughter and her friend had to go through. It was really hard to see the blood on the sofa.”
The grief-stricken mom said her daughter hopes to share her story with other domestic-violence victims someday.
“I don’t want her to start blaming herself,” Cruz said. “Sometimes we end up loving the wrong person, and it could just turn out really bad.”