PHOENIX (AZFamily) — An Arizona man at the center of a high-profile case for his young daughter’s death in a hot car last summer died in Phoenix on Wednesday morning, authorities confirmed.
Christopher Ryan Scholtes, 38, was found dead around 5 a.m. in a home near 7th Street and Northern Avenue. Phoenix police are investigating his death as a suicide.
Scholtes, who was accused of leaving his 2-year-old daughter in a hot car outside a Marana home last year, accepted a deal last month where he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and child abuse.
KOLD News 13 confirmed that Scholtes was supposed to turn himself in by the end of the day Wednesday.
The plea deal held a sentence of no more than 30 years in prison for both counts. He was slated to be sentenced on Nov. 21.
Christopher Ryan Scholtes, 38, was found dead around 5 a.m. in a home near 7th Street and Northern Avenue.(Arizona’s Family/Pima County Sheriff’s Department)
On July 9, 2024, Marana police and firefighters responded to a home near Paseo Rancho Acero and Paytons Court and found the toddler unresponsive in the backseat of a car. She was pronounced dead a short time later.
Summer temperatures peaked around 109 degrees that day, and an autopsy report showed that the child had a body temperature of 108.9 degrees.
Scholtes reportedly told police at the time that he left his daughter in the car with the air conditioning running while he went inside. However, security video showed that his daughter was left in the car for roughly three hours until his wife came home.
Body-camera video showed the scene aftermath, with Scholtes pacing around the home telling authorities that it was “his worst nightmare.”
Scholtes’ other two children, ages 5 and 9, said their father had left all three of them in the car regularly and that “he got distracted by playing his game and putting his food away” when their sister was in the car.
The father also faced scrutiny when he was permitted to take a vacation to Maui with his wife and two daughters, just under a year after his daughter died.
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