It’s always a sad situation when somebody passes away but when it is a child, it takes on an entirely new meaning. Unfortunately, it happened two years ago when a child died in a hot car.
At the time, the little girl’s 37-year-old father, Christopher Scholtes had left her in the vehicle because she was sleeping. Unfortunately, she was left out in the hot Arizona sun for hours while he was playing video games.
When he was first taken in for this issue, he was indicted and charged with a crime. Now that two years have passed, however, a grand jury has brought him up on first-degree murder charges and child abuse.
His daughter, Parker, was found lifeless in their Honda Acura CRV. It was 4:15 in the afternoon and according to the County medical examiner, her body temperature had reached 108.9°F. this led to death by ‘environmental heat exposure .’
According to reports, the father was playing PlayStation video games when his daughter died. At first, he was charged with second-degree murder after leaving her in the car with the air conditioning running.
They had returned home at 12:30 PM and he didn’t want to wake her so he left her in the car for a short amount of time. According to court records, however, he had been playing video games for more than three hours and it wasn’t until his wife got home at 4 PM that she was discovered in the SUV.
His wife, who is an anesthesiologist sent text messages to her husband as she rushed to the hospital. She said: “I told you to stop leaving them in the car, how many times have I told you? We’ve lost her, she was perfect.”
Scholtes replied: “Babe I’m sorry. How could I do this. I killed our baby, this can’t be real.”
Reports indicate that he was distracted by the videogame and putting away the food and forgot about his daughter being in the car. Due to new facts that have come to light and testimonies from the other children, the more severe charge of first-degree murder has been levied against him.