New details have emerged in the case against a Sacramento County man accused of kidnapping a 10-year-old girl whom he met on the online gaming platform Roblox.
Matthew Naval was arrested on April 13 after authorities say they found him with the missing girl and her pet bird in an Elk Grove strip mall, over 250 miles from her Kern County home. Naval has pleaded not guilty to multiple felony charges for kidnapping and lewd acts with a minor.
Naval, 27, told a deputy from the Kern County Sheriff’s Office that the girl had said she was 18. He said he agreed to pick her up so she could “escape” verbal abuse at home and they could be together as a couple, according to a report submitted by the deputy and filed in Kern County Superior Court.
Naval allegedly admitted she looked younger in person, telling a deputy he thought she was maybe 17. He ended the interview by saying, “I think it would be best if I don’t know how old she is,” the deputy’s report says.
His attorney, Mark Anthony Raimondo, told The Times that Naval has mental health challenges and may have autism.
The day before the girl went missing, she posted a video on TikTok with the caption, “First time getting kidnapped, lmao,” and footage shot out of a car window, according to a report filed by a deputy. She also told friends she was going to pay someone to kidnap her, according to another deputy’s report.
The girl told an Elk Grove Police officer that Naval picked her up around midnight to hang out at a park. She said she got distracted talking with him and did not realize that they were heading away from her home in the city of Taft until around three hours later, the officer wrote in court documents.
She told the officer she wanted to go home at that point, but didn’t tell Naval because she did not know how to ask, documents say. When asked by a sheriff’s deputy what she would like to see happen to Naval, she said, “I would like to know that he doesn’t do it to anyone else,” the deputy reported.
The pair allegedly met on Roblox in March and had chatted on Discord for several weeks. Naval claims he didn’t know what she looked like until he picked her up in April, according to court records.
He allegedly told law enforcement that they had masturbated together online — him with his camera on and her with her camera off, according to a deputy’s report. He said that he kissed her on the lips “a few times” and held her hand during their drive, but that they did not have any sexual contact. He also told a deputy that if they got a hotel and she would have been willing to have sex he would have “seriously considered it,” the document states.
He tried to get a motel room for them to stay at in Fresno, court documents state, but was turned down because he lacked two forms of identification.
Raimondo argued that Naval did not understand the nature of the situation or the girl’s age, given his mental health challenges.
“I think Roblox has to take some responsibility here. I think the parents have to take some responsibility,” he said. “The penalty for this travesty, which is a really, really huge misunderstanding, should not fall on Matthew’s shoulders alone.”
In an interview with local news station KGET, Naval said he did not learn her real age until he was arrested and that it “sickens” him every time hears it.
“I should’ve been more careful,” he told the outlet. “I should’ve been more questioning when it came to having that person involved.”
Roblox is an online platform where users can design their own games and invite others to play. It reports having 97.8 million daily active users with a core demographic of children and teens. Naval told a sheriff’s deputy that the Roblox is “kiddish,” but he plays it for the “social aspect.”
The platform has drawn criticism for how it can be used by pedophiles to message children, and in extreme cases, kidnap them. Roblox has said that it takes any behavior on its platform that doesn’t abide by its standards “extremely seriously.”
“We continuously evolve and enhance our safety approach to catch and prevent malicious or harmful activity,” the company said in a 2024 statement. “This includes text chat filters to block inappropriate words and phrases, and not allowing user-to-user image sharing on Roblox.”
A family member reported the girl missing when she was not in her bed around 8 a.m. on April 13, according to court documents. A relative said the girl did not have a history of running away or mental health issues, but that he had taken away her phone in the past because she was communicating with strangers on applications.
Later that day, family members used a “find my device” app to see that her cellphone was near Elk Grove and connected to a network called “Matthew’s Wifi,” according to a deputy’s report filed in court. They also found a friend of the girl on Roblox with the username “TheMatt3798.”
Deputies say they then learned the account was registered to a Matthew Naval, who lived in Elk Grove. Naval was also the registered owner of a 2014 Honda Civic that license plate readers had captured driving through McKittrick in Kern County at 3:17 a.m on April 13 and then farther north in Kettleman City in Kings County at 4:10 a.m., authorities say.
The Sheriff’s Office contacted the Elk Grove Police Department for assistance. Officers then found the girl and Naval at a strip mall near his home and took him into custody, according to authorities.
Naval is being held in a Bakersfield jail in lieu of $1.35-million bail, according to Kern County inmate records.
He was charged on April 18 with a count of kidnapping, a count of kidnapping a child under 14 to commit lewd or lascivious acts, two counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14, a count of exhibiting harmful material to a minor, a count of contacting a minor with intent to commit a sexual offense and a count of contacting a minor to commit a sexual offense, all felonies, court records show.
Naval has pleaded not guilty to all charges and is scheduled to appear in court on June 25.
