Court documents are shedding light on the alleged abduction of a 10-year-old girl from California’s Central Valley by a 27-year-old man whom she met through the popular gaming portal, Roblox.
When the defendant, Matthew Naval, picked her up in Taft, California, the girl thought they’d go to a park near her home to hang out, she told investigators. But as they talked and drove, they decided to go to another park, one a little farther away.
She got distracted during the drive, the girl told investigators. It wasn’t until three hours later that she realized she was nowhere near her home.
“Once I realized we were far away from my house, I did want to go home, but I did not actually ask him to take me home because I did not know how to ask that,” the girl told Kern County sheriff’s investigators, according to newly-released court documents. “I was thinking about how to ask him, though,” she said.
Naval was arrested on April 13 after the two were found together in his car at a strip mall in Elk Grove, over 250 miles north of Taft.
He was being held on $1.35 million bail on kidnapping and multiple child sex-related charges.
In a jailhouse interview with Nexstar’s KGET, Naval said the girl looked young but told him she was 18. He said there was no sexual contact, and they “pretty much” just held hands.
When questioned by detectives, however, Naval, 27, said they kissed a few times, and he would have “really considered it” if she’d been willing to engage in sexual activity. According to the documents, he tried to rent a hotel room in Fresno but was turned away because he didn’t have two forms of identification.
Naval’s attorney, Mark Anthony Raimondo, has said his client has autism and views the world differently. Naval was only looking to make a friend, he said.
One of the stranger details contained in the documents came from friends of the girl: they told a deputy the girl said she was going to pay someone to kidnap her. The girl posted a video on TikTok with the caption, “First time getting kidnapped, lmao,” with her camera aimed out of a moving vehicle, the reports say.
The search
The girl was reported missing the morning of April 13; a relative had last seen her the night before.
Her family used an app that showed the girl’s phone was near Elk Grove and connected to a mobile hotspot called “Matthew’s iPhone,” according to the documents. They also found a friend of hers on the popular world-building and gaming app Roblox who had the username “TheMatt3798.”
Investigators obtained information for that account and identified the user as Naval, documents said. A records check gave them his address and the license plate of his gray Honda Civic.
License plate readers captured that vehicle in Kern County at 3:17 and 4:10 a.m. on April 13, the reports say.
Detectives pinged the girl’s phone and notified Elk Grove police of the investigation, keeping them updated with the car’s location. An Elk Grove police officer found the car in a parking lot at 3:35 p.m. with Naval in the driver’s seat and the girl in the front passenger seat, according to the documents.
Naval is due back in court next month.
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