The Arizona father who left his young daughter to die in a baking hot car while he played video games became defensive and said “So I’m being treated like a murderer?” when cops confronted him, newly released bodycam footage shows.
Christopher Scholtes, 37, broke down when police responded to his home on July 9 and found his two-year-old daughter Parker clinging to life in the family car, where he claimed to have left her with the air conditioner on for just a half hour because he didn’t want to wake her.
“So I’m being treated like a murderer?” he told police after they told him the home may be a crime scene, raising his voice in the bodycam footage obtained by Inside Edition.
When police first arrived at the home and were trying to save Parker, Scholtes appeared distressed as he held his head in his hands and paced about the home, the video shows.
“Please baby, please,” he pleaded at one point, later saying “I can’t believe this” with a cracking voice as he spoke on the phone.
“She’s very hot right now. We’re going to do everything we can,” police told the father, who hid his face behind his hands.
Parker was discovered in critical condition when her mother — an anesthesiologist — came home around 4 p.m. and discovered her in the car with the AC off.
In the footage, Scholtes tells police he only left Parker outside for “no more than 30, 45 minutes” and that he checked on her throughout — but court documents later revealed he allegedly left her in the baking car for over three hours while he was inside, and that he made a habit of leaving his three daughters in the car.
“I told you to stop leaving them in the car,” his wife, Erike Scholtes texted him after the tragedy. “How many times have I told you?”
Their two other children even told police their father regularly left them outside in the car, according to a criminal complaint, which added that he “got distracted playing his game and putting his food away” while his daughter was outside dying.
A 16-year-old daughter from a previous marriage told KVOA-TV Scholtes frequently left her alone inside cars without food for hours at a time — to the point that Child Protective Services took her away from him — and that she was surprised tragedy hadn’t struck sooner.
Scholtes pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges on Thursday and remains free.
His wife previously asked a judge to release him to come home to his family so they could “start the grieving process” together.
“This was a big mistake doesn’t represent him,” she said.
