Girlfriend of firefighter facing sex assault charges died while couple was on vacation

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This article was published 26/09/2017 (2944 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg mother who raised concerns about a local firefighter’s involvement with her underage daughter more than a decade ago says no one believed her — not even after her daughter died while on vacation with the man.

Manuel Ruiz, 52, faces criminal charges for sexual and drug offences that date back to 2001. He’s accused of victimizing three females — two underage girls and one adult. The 25-year veteran firefighter has been removed from active duty with the Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic Service and was placed on administrative leave as he awaits the outcome of the criminal case against him.

It was only after those criminal charges were laid Sept. 22, the relationship Ruiz had with Barbara Nelson’s daughter came to light.

Melissa Nelson, 21, died in 2006 after telling her mother she was going on a vacation to Cuba with Ruiz. They had known each other since Melissa was 15, when Ruiz offered her a ride from her home community of Roseau River First Nation to Winnipeg, Barbara Nelson said. Ruiz, a martial arts instructor, had offered self-defence classes and security training to some First Nations communities in Manitoba, but Nelson said she doesn’t know if her daughter took classes from Ruiz. She was kept in the dark about their relationship, she said, although she recalled phoning Ruiz to warn him that Melissa was only 15.

“I told him and begged him, leave my daughter alone. She’s just a kid. And then he hung up on me,” she told the Free Press Tuesday.

“All of a sudden he was in her life, and I was like, well, who is this guy? And nobody’s talking to me.”

They went to Varadero, Cuba together in March 2006, and less than two days into the trip, Nelson said Ruiz called to tell her Melissa was dead.

“All I heard from him was when he called me that morning, six o’clock that morning, to tell me that she had fell from the balcony and she didn’t make it,” she said.

“She fell – that was all I heard from him – and my daughter was gone. Nobody else ever told me anything else.”

“I felt so helpless. I didn’t know what to do next, because I was in mourning for my daughter,” Nelson added, saying she has never met Ruiz in person.

Trip was meant to ‘was to start fresh’

In a 2006 interview with the Free Press following Melissa’s death, Ruiz said the Cuba trip was a “holiday to start fresh in our relationship.”

During the interview, Ruiz recounted the events of the evening. The couple had been drinking at a nightclub and returned to their room when Melissa became sick. He said he watched from inside the room as she went outside to the balcony and leaned over the waist-high railing to throw up.

“I saw her leaning over and I ran towards her, but it was too late,” he said. “All I saw were her feet going over.” Ruiz said ran down the stairs and outside to Nelson, immediately starting CPR. Doctors at the hotel also helped, but Nelson was soon declared dead.

“She was a good person,” Ruiz said. “She loved her family very much. She was just a great spirit.”

Women previously applied for protection orders against him

Eleven years later, upon hearing he has now been charged with sexually assaulting a woman and a youth, as well as paying for sex from an underage girl, Barbara Nelson said “it’s like I’m living that nightmare over again.”

Ruiz doesn’t have any criminal convictions, but court records show three different women previously applied for protection orders against him and all three were denied. He now faces charges of sexual assault, sexual exploitation, forcible confinement, drug possession and providing liquor to a minor.

Tom Bilous, vice president of United Firefighters of Winnipeg, said the union didn’t know about any complaints or allegations against Ruiz until the Winnipeg Police Service announced the charges Monday.

“This is the first we’re hearing of any of this, that’s why we’re so shocked and saddened. This is completely out of the blue for us, just as it is for the general public,” he said.

Nelson said she’ll be following the court process closely, hoping for justice.

“Before she went away, she had two jobs, she was going to school, she did volunteer work for the West End Biz, she wanted to be a policewoman. She had her whole life in front of her,” she said of her daughter Melissa.

“I just want to know what happened to my daughter. That’s all.”

— with files from the Winnipeg Free Press archives

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay