An Arizona man is currently facing murder charges after it was revealed he left his 2-year-old daughter in a sweltering car while he played video games on PlayStation. According to new reports, Christopher Scholtes, the 37-year-old father of three, claimed that he only left little Parker Scholtes sleeping inside his 2023 Acura MDX for 30 minutes after returning home from shopping because he didn’t want to wake her.
However, newly released court records reveal that Christopher was actually engrossed in video games for more than three hours until his horrified doctor wife, Erika Scholtes, came home and found the girl dead inside his car. The tragic incident occurred on July 9th, with the outlet reporting that Erika scolded her husband via text messages after the tragedy, reminding him of her previous warnings against leaving their children in the car.
Christopher told police he arrived at their home in the Tucson suburb of Marana around 2:30 p.m., parked the car outside because the garage was clogged with exercise equipment, and then forgot that Parker was still inside her car seat before his wife discovered the horrific scene around 4 p.m.
However, surveillance footage reviewed by police indicates that Christopher arrived outside their house shortly after 12:30 p.m., leaving Parker in the car under 109-degree weather for more than three hours. The complaint filed in the case states that Christopher “got distracted playing his game and putting his food away,” while the couple’s other two children told cops their dad regularly left all three siblings alone in the car while he was inside the house.
Christopher told police that he had turned on the air conditioning for Parker but conceded that he knew it would shut off automatically after 30 minutes. On Friday, when Christopher Scholtes was charged with murder and child endangerment, his wife pleaded with the judge to release him pending trial, calling the fatal mistake “a big mistake” and stating that she wanted all of them to go through the grieving process together as a family.
The judge set bail at a $25,000 bond despite a request from prosecutors for a $1 million bond. The case has sparked conversations about the dangers of leaving children unattended in hot cars and highlights the importance of prioritizing child safety over personal leisure activities.
