Father Who Allegedly Binged PlayStation as Toddler Died in 109-Degree Heat Faces New Indictment
The father who is accused of leaving his 2-year-old daughter to die in a hot car while he played a lot of PlayStation has been charged with murder.
Following the indictment on Thursday in Pima County, Arizona, Christopher Scholtes, 37, is now charged with first-degree murder instead of second-degree murder. This is according to Tucson ABC station KGUN. Like at the start, he has to deal with a charge of child abuse.
Police say Scholtes got home and left his 2-year-old daughter Parker in his car, where she was the victim. He supposedly said he didn’t want to wake her up, so he left her there with the AC on. Police said that the man’s story did not match up with the surveillance video. The police say he got home at 12:53 p.m., but he said he got there around 2 p.m.
The wife, Erika Scholtes, got home from work around 4 p.m. They said when she got there, the car wasn’t running and the AC wasn’t on.
KVOA got a tape of her speaking for him at his bond hearing. She said the death was an accident and that she did not represent him.
In court papers, however, it was said that her texts showed that he had left his kids in the car alone before.
Phoenix NBC station KVOA reported that she texted him, “I told you to stop leaving them in the car, how many times have I told you?” Parker was on her way to the hospital at the time.
The police say they talked to Scholtes’ two other girls, who are 5 and 9 years old, and both of them said that he did leave them alone in the car regularly. They told the cops that Scholtes got home from running errands and “got distracted by playing his video game and putting his food away,” as reported by KOLD.
USA Today reports that police wrote in an affidavit that the surveillance film did not show Scholtes checking on the car or his daughter.
They said, “When she asked where the 2-year-old was, he started to look through the house’s rooms and then realized he had left her in the car.”