A man from Arizona who is accused of killing his daughter was permitted to go on vacation with his family before his trial later this year...
A man from Arizona who is accused of killing his daughter was permitted to go on vacation with his family before his trial later this year.
Court records from Pima County Superior Court that got say that Christopher Scholtes, 38, asked to go to Hawaii with his wife and two daughters from May 1 to May 9.
Judge Kimberly Ortiz consented to hear arguments on the subject in an order filed on April 3. After a hearing on April 15, she decided to grant Scholtes' motion.
According to an initial complaint obtained, Scholtes' vacation came 10 months after his 2-year-old daughter died when he reportedly left her alone in his car while he played video games.
The accusation states that his wife found the toddler three hours later, when she got home and found the toddler passed out in the car.
The lawsuit says that the temperature inside the car at that time was 109 degrees.
Scholtes is said to have informed Marana police detectives that he left his daughter in the car with the air conditioning on while he conducted errands that day because she was asleep in her car seat.
The lawsuit says that Scholtes informed officers he knew that his car motor would turn off after 30 minutes.
During interviews, Scholtes's two surviving daughters, who were 6 and 9 at the time, also said that their father had left them alone in the car for long lengths of time before.
The complaint says that Scholtes and his wife had a text conversation in which she allegedly said, "I told you to stop leaving them in the car. How many times have I told you?"
The Pima County Attorney's Office charged Scholtes with first-degree murder and wilful child abuse after looking at the case's evidence.
At his arraignment, he pleaded not guilty to both charges. Court records show that in March, Scholtes turned down a proposal from the prosecution that would have lowered the penalty to second-degree murder if he agreed to plead guilty.
Just a few days after turning down that plea deal, Scholtes asked the court for permission to go to Maui with his wife and surviving children from May 1 to May 9.
Judge Ortiz stated in her ruling allowing the request that Scholtes would still have to follow all the terms of his parole. She also highlighted that he must be in touch with pretrial services while he is away and not have any unsupervised contact with children, even his own.
Then, prosecutors asked the court to make Scholtes give up his passport before he made the almost 3,000-mile trip to Hawaii, but Ortiz turned down that request, according to court papers.
KOLD was the first to say that the court had agreed to Scholtes' request to go to Hawaii with his family.
His murder trial will start on October 27, which is later than the original date of September.
Scholtes could get life in jail if he is found guilty.
No comments