A newly released 911 recording reveals the frantic moments after an Arizona father, who had been accused of leaving his young daughter to die in a sweltering car while he watched pornography, was found dead by suicide just hours before he was expected to surrender for prison.
Christopher Scholtes, 38, was found inside the garage of his $1 million Phoenix home on November 5, 2025, by the family’s nanny, according to the Daily Mail.
The nanny discovered Scholtes at about 5:20 a.m., shortly after he had intentionally filled the garage with exhaust from his Honda S2000, and immediately called 911.
“He’s in our home garage. It’s suicide, it’s suicide,” the nanny can be heard telling the dispatcher. “He’s not breathing, and I can’t find a pulse.”
During the call, she also told emergency operators that smoke was pouring out of the garage and spreading into the house.
The recording captures her describing the confusion inside the home as she tried to get the family moving and ensure their two young daughters were taken to safety before the fumes put them at risk.
“I got them up to get the girls out, but they haven’t, like, gotten the girls out – like everything is kind of chaotic,” the nanny said in the call.
Scholtes died on the same day he was scheduled to report to prison ahead of sentencing, where he was facing up to 30 years behind bars.
The dad — who had a known habit of leaving his kids in the car — had pleaded guilty a month earlier to a second-degree murder charge for leaving his 2-year-old daughter to die in a hot car in July 2024.
Authorities said that Scholtes had left his daughter Parker inside the family’s Acura in the driveway of their Marana home outside Tucson on a scorching July afternoon in 2024, when the temperature soared to 109 degrees Fahrenheit.
He claimed to have left the toddler in the car around 12:30 p.m. for 30 minutes with the air conditioning on because he didn’t want to wake her from a nap.
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But court records later revealed he left the little girl in the car for over three hours — and even admitted knowing the car would shut off automatically within a half-hour.
Scholtes was inside watching porn, playing video games and drinking beer while his daughter roasted to death.
Parker wasn’t rescued until her anesthesiologist mother came home around 4 p.m., with bodycam footage from responding police showing Scholtes break into a panic while insisting he’d left her outside for “no more than 30, 45 minutes.”
“She’s very hot right now. We’re going to do everything we can,” cops told Scholtes.
“‘My dad started screaming cause he walked outside and he saw that she was in the car still, her lips were purple and she wasn’t breathing,’” one of his daughters recounted, according to a police report.
Parker was rushed to nearby Banner University Medical Center but died within an hour, according to authorities.
The dad had a history of leaving his children in the car.
His older children from a previous marriage told investigators he would leave them in the car when they were kids, while his younger daughters with Parker’s mother, Erika, reported that their dad regularly left all three of them strapped in the car while he went inside.
His own texts with his wife also confirmed his troubling behavior.
“I told you to stop leaving them in the car,” Parker’s mother texted him after the death. “How many times have I told you?”
“Babe, I’m sorry,” he responded. “Babe, our family. How could I do this? I killed our baby, this can’t be real.”
According to medical examiner Daniel Casa, Scholtes had begun to make suicidal statements in the aftermath of his daughter’s death.
