Arizona father arrested after a child died inside a hot car
MARANA, Ariz. (CNN, KYMA/KECY) - An Arizona father is charged with second-degree murder after leaving his two-year-old daughter inside a hot car.
He says he left the engine and air conditioner (AC) on, but it was not running when she was found, and how long the child was left in the car is under investigation.
The family car has become a key piece of evidence in a murder investigation.
Marana police say when Christopher Scholtes saw his two-year-old daughter was asleep in the back seat, he left her there and went in the house.
He said he'd done it before, left the engine and AC on, and she was fine, but on July 9, the car and the AC stopped.
Police say Scholtes told them he came home about 2:45pm, but surveillance cameras in the neighborhood showed the car returning closer to 12:50pm, a roughly two hour difference.
At 4:00pm, the child's mother came home and found the girl. The mother's a doctor, and she tried to revive her daughter. Paramedics tried too and rushed the girl to Banner UMC Phoenix. There, she was declared dead.
Police say cases like this touch them in a way some other cases might not.
"We are human, just as, the rest of our community. Many of us are new parents, and we certainly do feel and share in the community's grief with this event," said Officer Molly Metz with the Marana Police Department (MPD).
Search warrants show detectives are checking the electronics of the car. They could show when it was running, when it was parked and when the AC was on.
They are checking other electronics. Police say cellphones, a laptop computer and a Play Station 5 could help document what Scholtes was doing and when he was doing it.
Not only that, detectives are checking the girl's own iPad. They think its GPS can help establish how long she was left in the car, what she was doing while in the car, and if she was on her tablet or asleep.
Scholtes, the father of the two-year-old, has been arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder and child abuse.
Officials emphasize that children and pets should never be left alone in a hot car where temperatures can soar to deadly levels in a matter of minutes.
