Father was playing video games while his daughter drowned in the bathtub, according to Osceola deputies.

OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. – According to the sheriff’s office, a man in Osceola County has been arrested and is facing charges of aggravated manslaughter of a child following the drowning death of his daughter in a bathtub while he was playing video games.

Joshua Ruiz-Martinez, 32, was arrested via warrant on Tuesday, records show.

His daughter was tragically pronounced dead on the evening of April 21, 2024, less than an hour after the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office received his 911 call from the 600 block of Steerview Street, as stated in the affidavit for Ruiz-Martinez’s arrest warrant.

Ruiz-Martinez claimed he had briefly left his daughter in the bathtub to prepare a bottle in the kitchen and upon his return, found her unresponsive and face-down in the water. However, information retrieved from search warrants on his electronic devices painted a conflicting picture, according to the affidavit.

It was found that Ruiz-Martinez was actively playing video games on his computer that day, according to the document. After the child was placed in the bathtub around 5:25 p.m., gameplay actions were then documented at 5:27 p.m., 5:29 p.m., 5:33 p.m. and 5:35 p.m., contradicting his earlier statements, investigators said.

The gameplay logs then recorded an “AFK” entry — aka “away from keyboard,” in this case indicating 15 minutes of inactivity — at 5:50 p.m., what the affidavit states aligned with the timing of the 911 call at 5:37 p.m. and was confirmation that “Joshua was actively engaged with the game up until moments before discovering his daughter’s drowning.”

Detectives would go on to find messages that Ruiz-Martinez sent between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. that night which falsely claimed his daughter drowned in a pool and that law enforcement had not informed him of what happened, as well as a warning to his friends to “never leave your kid with no one,” according to the affidavit.

When investigators showed Ruiz-Martinez these timestamps, he allegedly reacted emotionally and said, “I killed my daughter for a game? Please tell me I did not kill my daughter for a game,” the affidavit states.

Ruiz-Martinez is being held on no bond at Osceola County Corrections.

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