Christopher Scholtes, a 37-year-old father of three, claimed he only left little Parker Scholtes sleeping inside his 2023 Acura MDX for 30 minutes after returning home from shopping because he didn’t want to wake her.
But newly released court records show he fiddled with video games for more than three hours — until his horrified doctor wife came home and found the girl dead inside his car, KPLC-TV News reported.
“I told you to stop leaving them in the car,” Erika Scholtes, an anesthesiologist, scolded her husband in text messages after the July 9 tragedy, the outlet reported.
“How many times have I told you?”
“Babe, I’m sorry,” the accused killer allegedly responded. “Babe, our family. How could I do this? I killed our baby, this can’t be real.”
Erika Scholtes called Parker “perfect” during the heart-breaking exchange.
Christopher Scholtes told police he arrived at their home in the Tucson suburb of Marana around 2:30 p.m. and parked the car outside because the garage was clogged with exercise equipment.
He said he forgot the girl was still in her car seat before his wife came home at 4 p.m. and made the horrific discovery.
But surveillance footage reviewed by police shows that he arrived outside the house shortly after 12:30 p.m., leaving Parker in the car under 109-degree weather for more than three hours, KPLC reported.
According to a complaint filed in the case, Christopher Scholtes “got distracted playing his game and putting his food away” — while the couple’s other two children told cops their dad regularly left all three siblings alone in the car while he was in the house.
The distracted dad told police he left the air conditioning on in the car for Parker but conceded that he knew it would shut off automatically after 30 minutes, the report said.
In court Friday, when Christopher Scholtes was charged with murder and child endangerment, his wife pleaded with the judge to release him pending trial calling the fatal flub “a big mistake.“
“I’m just asking if you can allow him to come home to us so that we can all start the grieving process, so he can bury our daughter with us this coming week and that we can go through this whole process together as a family,” she told the judge.
“This was a big mistake doesn’t represent him,” Erika Scholtes said. “I just want the girls to see their father — that I don’t have to tell them tonight that they’re going to have to endure another loss.”
The judge set bail at a $25,000 bond despite a request from prosecutors for a $1 million bond.
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