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An Arizona father facing at least 20 years in prison for fatally leaving his 2-year-old daughter in a hot car while he played video games has died by suicide, prosecutors said.
The Pima County Attorney’s Office announced on Wednesday, Nov. 5, that 38-year-old Christopher Scholtes died on Tuesday night. Scholtes had been scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday, when he was set to be taken into custody ahead of his formal sentencing.
Phoenix police confirmed to USA TODAY that Scholtes’ body was found in Phoenix.
As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors announced on Oct. 22, Scholtes pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and intentional child abuse, the county attorney’s office said. As part of the agreement, Scholtes was facing between 20 and 30 years in prison at his sentencing on Nov. 21 and would have been ineligible for early release.
Here’s what else to know.
On July 9, 2024, Scholtes told investigators he left his 2-year-old daughter in the car so she could sleep but that he thought the air-conditioning running outside the family’s home in Marana, a town about 100 miles south of Phoenix. The girl’s mother found her hours later, with the A/C automatically turned off, and outside temperatures in the triple digits.
Court documents obtained by USA TODAY showed that Scholtes told investigators that he regularly left all three children of his children alone in the car.
While the 2-year-old was being rushed to the hospital, Scholtes got multiple text messages from his wife Erika, saying that she had reminded him multiple times to “stop leaving them in the car,” according to the documents.
Scholtes apologized, writing: “Babe I’m sorry! … Babe our family. How could I do this. I killed our baby, this can’t be real.”
Every year across the U.S., parents leave their children in hot cars, mostly by accident as they juggle work and their children, according to Kids and Car Safety, a group trying to educate the public about the problem. In many cases, children figure out how to enter the car by themselves and get locked in.
So far this year, 30 babies and children in the U.S. have died in hot cars, according to the group. Police and prosecutors frequently decline to pursue cases against parents who have either just made the worst mistake of their lives or didn’t know their child got trapped in their car.
Part of what made Scholtes’ case stand out is that he intentionally left his daughter in the car, though he said he had forgotten she was there. While his daughter died, court records show he unloaded groceries and played video games.
One of the biggest problems contributing to hot car deaths is that many parents don’t think it could happen to them, according to Amber Rollins, director of Kids and Car Safety, a group trying to educate the public about the problem.
“People think that there’s just absolutely no way under any condition that this could happen, that someone could actually unknowingly leave their child in their car,” she previously told USA TODAY. “They think, ‘This must be a monster.'”
Contributing: Amaris Encinas

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