Children being left in hot cars is always alarming. Every year, there are dozens of children who are left unattended in hot cars. Despite the fact that these stories are always widely reported on, caregivers continue to leave children in cars.
Bodycam footage has now been released of police responding to a 2-year-old girl in Marana, Arizona, who had been left to nap in the car. The girl's father, Christopher Scholtes, can be seen in the video as the police try to revive the toddler, pacing and nervous about his daughter.
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The scene is extremely tense and difficult to watch.
Inside Edition exclusively obtained access to the footage, which shows the moment police showed up at Christopher Scholtes' door, and first responders tried to revive his 2-year-old daughter, Parker. In the video, Scholtes looked distraught, walking around with his head in his hands. Police talked to him, asking him questions while the first responders tended to the child.
The home quickly turned into a possible crime scene.
"She's very hot right now. We're going to do everything we can," the first responders told Scholtes, who then buried his head in his hands and started to cry.
A police officer told Scholtes that they needed to treat the home as a possible crime scene. "So I'm being treated like a murderer," he asked. Officers said no.
Scholtes told police officers that he hadn't left Parker in the car for long.
When police questioned Scholtes, he told them Parker had fallen asleep in the car and he didn't want to wake her, so he left the car running with the air conditioning on.
"I want to say it was no more than 30, 45 minutes and I don't think the air was off that entire time. I think there was a time in between. I had checked on her last, it was still running, she was still sleeping and then when I went back out the car was off," he said when police asked how long he had left the toddler in the car.
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According to Scholtes, he became preoccupied and left his daughter in the car.
Reports from police say that Scholtes "got distracted by playing his game and putting his food away." He claimed to have arrived home around 2 p.m. and left Parker in the car to sleep. His wife found her around 4 p.m.
But security footage indicates that he actually arrived home around 1 p.m., meaning he left his daughter in the car for three hours. The temperature that day was 111 degrees, and he had parked in the sun.
Scholtes was later arrested for leaving his daughter in the car.
Unfortunately, first responders were unable to save Parker. Three days after her death, police showed up to arrest Scholtes. He fell to his knees when he was told. He appeared in court in August, pleading not guilty to first-degree murder.
His wife told the judge that the loss of their daughter was a "big mistake."
