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Joshua Ruiz-Martinez (Osceola County Jail).
A Florida man whose baby daughter drowned after he allegedly left her in the bathtub while he played video games was charged with aggravated manslaughter.
Joshua Ruiz-Martinez, 32, was caring for his infant daughter on the night of April 21, 2024, in the apartment that he shared with his partner, the mother of the child. According to an arrest affidavit, Ruiz-Martinez bathed the baby because she was getting “fussy.” The report stated that the baby had eczema, and Ruiz-Martinez believed a bath would help her. While the baby was in the tub with water “up to her stomach,” Ruiz-Martinez told police that he left her alone for three minutes while he went and got a bottle. When he returned, the baby was “unresponsive, face down in the water.”
The medical examiner ruled the baby’s death to be accidental drowning.
As part of the investigation into the baby’s death, a search warrant was issued for Ruiz-Martinez’s electronic devices. Investigators soon discovered that the story they were told by Ruiz-Martinez and the data they received from his cellphone and home computer had “significant discrepancies.”
According to the arrest affidavit, the apartment Ruiz-Martinez shared with his family had a walk-in closet that he had turned into a gaming room. He had told police that he spent his day caring for the baby and playing games. Police looked at time stamps that showed Martinez was 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,” including the times he stated the baby was in the bathtub.
One of the gaming time stamps found by investigators came two minutes after Ruiz-Martinez said he put the baby in the water. Several more time stamps indicated that he engaged in the game while the baby was in the water, contradicting his original claim that he was getting the baby a bottle, the affidavit states. Another time stamp showed activity two minutes before Ruiz-Martinez called 911 to report that his baby was face down in the water. The affidavit stated that this “confirms Joshua was actively engaged in the game up until moments before discovering his daughter’s drowning.”
Hours later, more data from Ruiz-Martinez’s computer revealed that he had posted on Discord, saying that the baby had drowned in a pool. In another message, he said that law enforcement had not told him what happened and warned: “Never leave your kid with no one.”
Ruiz-Martinez was interviewed by police and read his rights, after which he reportedly admitted to being responsible for his daughter’s death. But he continued to provide “conflicting” statements about his activity while he left the baby in the tub. He was eventually confronted 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.”
Ruiz-Martinez was charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child and booked into the Osceola County Jail. He is being held without bond.