New details have emerged in the case against a man from the County Sacramento accused of having removed a 10-year-old girl whom he met on the Roblox online game platform.
Matthew Naval was arrested on April 13 after the authorities said they found it with the missing daughter and her pet bird in an Elk Grove shopping center, more than 250 miles from his house in Kern. Naval pleaded not guilty of several accusations of crime for kidnapping and obscene acts with a minor.
Naval, 27, told an assistant to the Kern County Sheriff’s office that the girl said that she was 18 years old. He said that he had agreed to recover it so that she could “escape” the verbal abuses at home and that they could be together as a couple, according to a report subjected by the deputy and deposited at Kern County Superior.
Naval would have admitted that she looked younger in person, telling an assistant that he thought he was 17 years old. He ended the interview saying, “I think it would be better if I don’t know how old she is,” said the deputy’s report.
His lawyer, Mark Anthony Raimondo, told Times that Naval had mental health challenges and can have autism.
The day before the young girl’s disappearance, she posted a video on Tiktok with legend: “The first time in kidnapped, Lmao” and images pulled through the window of a car, according to a report by a deputy. She also told her friends that she was going to pay someone to remove him, according to the report of another deputy.
The daughter told an Elk Grove police officer that Naval had taken the place around midnight to go from the park in a park. She said that she had been distracted by speaking with him and did not realize that they were walking away from her house in the city of Taft until about three hours later, the officer wrote in court documents.
She told the officer that she wanted to go home at that time, but did not tell Naval because she did not know how to ask, according to documents. When asked by an assistant to a sheriff what she would like to see arriving in Naval, she said: “I would like to know that he does not do it to anyone else,” reported the deputy.
The couple would have met on Roblox in March and discussed Discord for several weeks. Naval claims that he did not know what she looked like until he picked it up in April, according to the judicial archives.
He would have told the police that they had masturbated online – him with his camera and her with his camera, according to a report by the deputy. He said he had kissed her on his lips “several times” and held his hand during their journey, but that they had no sexual contact. He also told a deputy that if they obtained a hotel and that he would have been willing to have sex, he would have “seriously considered it,” said the document.
He tried to get a motel room so that they stay in Fresno, according to court documents, but he was refused because he did not have two forms of identification.
Raimondo argued that Naval did not understand the nature of the girl’s situation or age, given her challenges in mental health.
“I think Roblox must assume some responsibility here. I think parents must assume a certain responsibility,” he said. “The penalty of this parody, which is a really, really huge misunderstanding, should not fall alone on Matthew’s shoulders.”
In an interview with the local Kget news station, Naval said that he had not learned his real age until he was arrested and he “unknown” him each time.
“I should have been more prudent,” he said at the point of sale. “I should have been more questioned when it was a question of having this person involved.”
Roblox is an online platform where users can design their own games and invite others to play. It brings in 97.8 million daily active users with a basic demography of children and adolescents. Naval told a sheriff deputy that the Roblox was “Kiddish”, but he plays it for “the social aspect”.
The platform criticized the way it can be used by pedophiles to send a message to children and, in extreme cases, kidnap them. Roblox said he was taking all behavior on his platform which does not meet his standards “extremely in seriousness”.
“We are continuously evolving and improving our safety approach to capture and prevent a malicious or harmful activity,” said the company in a press release in 2024. “This includes text cat filters to block inappropriate words and sentences, and not allow user’s image sharing.”
A family member pointed out that the girl had disappeared when she was not in bed around 8 am on April 13, according to court documents. A parent said the girl had no history of health or mental health problems, but that he had removed her phone in the past because she communicated with foreigners on applications.
Later in the day, family members used a “Find My Device” application to see that his mobile phone was near Elk Grove and connected to a network called “Matthew WiFi”, according to an assistant report made to the court. They also found a girl’s friend on Roblox with the username “Thematt3798”.
The deputies say that they then learned that the account was recorded in a naval of Matthew, who lived in Elk Grove. Naval was also the registered owner of a 2014 Honda Civic that the license plaque readers had captured driving through McKittrick in the county of Kern at 3:17 am on April 13, then further north at Kettleman City in the County of Kings at 4:10 am, according to the authorities.
The sheriff’s office contacted the Elk Grove police service to get help. The police then found the daughter and the naval in a shopping center near his home and arrested him, according to the authorities.
Naval is detained in a Bakersfield prison instead of a deposit of $ 1.35 million, according to Kern’s county detainees.
He was charged on April 18 of a head of kidnapping, a chief of kidnapping of a child under the age of 14 to commit obscene or lascious acts, two accusations of obscene or Lascious acts with a child under the age of 14, a charm of harmful material to a minor, a chief of sexual contact, all the archives of the publication, all the sex archives.
Naval pleaded not guilty to all accusations and should appear in court on June 25.
California Daily Newspapers
