A 32 year old man has been charged with aggravated manslaughter after he allegedly left his infant daughter alone in the bathtub while he went to go and play video games.
According to Law and Crime, Florida resident Joshua Ruiz-Martinez had been caring for his infant daughter on the night of April 21, 2024, but after she became “fussy” he decided to give her a bath to calm her down.
In an accompanying arrest affidavit, the father claimed that his daughter suffered from the painful skin condition eczema and he thought that giving her a bath would help to soothe her.
Additionally, the affidavit reported that the baby was in the tub with water “up to her stomach” and that Ruiz-Martinez had left the bathroom for three minutes to grab a bottle and that when he returned, the baby was “unresponsive, face down in the water.”
Following the little girl’s death, police launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the tragedy, and in the course of their inquiries, searched Ruiz-Martinez’s electronic devices and discovered “significant discrepancies” in his story, reports The Mirror US.
While being questioned by the police, the man had told them he had spent his day taking care of his daughter and also gaming ( with the latter taking place in a converted walk-in wardrobe, that he had transformed into a gaming room.)
However, a more detailed look into the man’s gaming history revealed Martinez was actually playing a computer game called “Path of Exile” and that “[h]is gameplay included multiple transactions and location advancements during the periods he claimed to be tending to his daughter,” as well as the time she was in the bathtub.
During the investigation, police also discovered one of the gaming time stamps showed that it had happened two minutes after Ruiz-Martinez said he put the baby in the water.
Several other timestamps showed he was playing the video game while the baby had been in the water, thus contradicting the claiming he had just gone to get a bottle.
In a further damning finding, it was also revealed that the man had been playing the video game just two minutes before he called 911 to report the drowning.
According to the affidavit, this “confirms Joshua was actively engaged in the game up until moments before discovering his daughter’s drowning.”
Ruiz-Martinez also reportedly went onto the messaging app Discord and posted that his daughter had drowned. Yet in a second message, he stated that law enforcement had not told him what happened and warned: “Never leave your kid with no one.”
The man was then interrogated by police and read his rights, after which he reportedly admitted to being responsible for his daughter’s death. According to the outlet, the man continued to provide “conflicting” statements about his activity while he left the baby in the tub.
Police eventually confronted him with the time stamp evidence that proved what he had allegedly been doing and “emotionally” stated, “I killed my daughter for a game? Please tell me I did not kill my daughter for a game.” He was charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child and booked into the Osceola County Jail, where he is being held without bond.
