The Arizona father who left his small daughter to die in a boiling hot car while playing video games became defensive, saying, “So I’m being treated like a murderer?” When cops confronted him, new bodycam footage shows.
Christopher Scholtes, 37, also broke down when police arrived at his home on July 9 and discovered his two-year-old daughter Parker clinging to life in the family car, where he claimed to have left her with the air conditioner turned on for only a half-hour because he didn’t want to wake her.
“So I’m being treated like a murderer?” he asked police when they informed him that the residence could be a crime scene, raising his voice in bodycam footage acquired by Inside Edition. When officers first arrived at the home and attempted to save Parker, Scholtes appeared distressed, holding his head in his hands and pacing around, according to the video.
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“Please, baby, please,” he begged at one point, later repeating “I can’t believe this” with a cracked voice while on the phone. “She’s quite hot right now. We’re going to do all we can,” cops assured the father, who covered his face with his hands.
Parker was discovered in severe condition when her mother, an anesthesiologist, returned home at 4 p.m. and found her in the car with the air conditioner turned off.
Scholtes tells police in the video that he only left Parker outside for “no more than 30, 45 minutes” and that he checked on her throughout — but court documents later revealed that he allegedly left her in the baking car for more than three hours while he was inside and that he made a habit of leaving his three daughters in it.
“I told you to stop leaving them in the car,” his wife, Erika Scholtes, texted him following the disaster. “How many times have I told you?”
Their two other children even informed authorities that their father frequently left them outside in the car, according to a criminal complaint, adding that he “got distracted playing his game and putting his food away” as his daughter died outdoors.
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A 16-year-old daughter from a previous marriage told NYPOST that Scholtes routinely left her alone in cars without food for hours at a time, to the point that Child Protective Services removed her from him, and that she was shocked disaster had not struck sooner.
Scholtes pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges on Thursday and is still free.
His wife had earlier urged a judge to release him so that he could return home to his family and “start the grieving process” together.
“This was a big mistake doesn’t represent him,” she told me.