MARANA, Ariz. — An Arizona father arrested last week after his 2-year-old died after being left in a hot car; he had left his children in the car on several occasions before the little girl's death, according to new information obtained in court documents.
Christopher Scholtes, 37, was arrested last week after his daughter died in Marana.
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Scholtes told police the girl was sleeping in her car seat when he arrived home at 2:30 p.m. and decided not to wake her. Scholtes claimed to have left the vehicle on and the air conditioner running while he went inside the residence.
Scholtes told police he was aware that the vehicle would turn off automatically after 30 minutes, documents reveal.
It wasn't discovered that the child was never removed from the vehicle until the child's mother returned home from work after 4 p.m.
Detectives obtained security video that showed Scholtes arriving home and parking in his driveway at 12:53 p.m. Scholtes went inside the family's home joined by the child's two siblings, aged 5 and 9.
The vehicle was parked in direct sunlight.
Scholtes wife then pulled into the family's driveway several hours later at 4:08 p.m. and minutes later, at 4:16 p.m. a call to 911 was made. The temperature at the time was 109 degrees.
"I can't over-emphasize that you shouldn't do that," Dr. Frank LoVecchio, a Valleywise emergency physician, said.
LoVecchio said he warns people should never leave kids unattended in a car, even if they think the air conditioning is on. He said he's seen many things go wrong.
“If you leave your car in a sunny spot, it rises by one degree Celsius for the first 30 minutes," LoVecchio said. "The temperature goes really, really high inside the car.”
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According to the court documents, at no time between 12:53 p.m. and 4:08 p.m. is Scholtes seen on the security video going outside to the vehicle to check on the little girl.
Police talked to the Scholtes' two older children and it was discovered that he "regularly" left the children alone in the vehicle, according to the documents.
The document reveals that the children said Scholtes "got distracted by playing his game and putting food away" while their sister was in the vehicle.
While the 2-year-old girl was being rushed to the hospital, Scholtes received a text message from his wife.
The message read: "I told you to stop leaving them in the car, How many times have I told you."
Scholtes responded: "Babe, I'm sorry."
His wife then responded: "We've lost her, she was perfect."
Scholtes responded: "Babe our family. How could I do this. I killed our baby, this can't be real."
Scholtes is facing felony charges of domestic violence, second-degree murder and domestic violence-child abuse.
“There’s never a time that I can think of is a good time to leave a dog or a child in a car," Debra Nolen said.
Nolen is the founder of Don't Leave Me and the author of the law that allows people to break a window if a child or animal is at risk in a car.
She said that person must first call 911 and make sure there is no other reasonable manner in which the child or animal can be removed.
“If you see something, say something but in our case, if you see something, after you say something, do something because you need to get that child or dog out of the backseat of that car," Nolen said.
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