Christopher Scholtes, the husband of a doctor, took his own life in the garage of the family's Phoenix home on 5 November 2025, just hours before he was due to begin a 20 to 30-year prison sentence. He had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder over the death of his two-year-old daughter, Parker, who died of heatstroke in July 2024 after he left her in a hot car for three hours while he drank beer, watched pornography and played video games. A 911 call made by the family's nanny, who discovered his body, captures her distress as she describes finding him unresponsive in his garage, filled with carbon monoxide fumes.

In the six-minute call made at 5.20am, the nanny told the operator she found Scholtes, 38, slumped in his red Honda S2000 with no pulse, and that the garage had to be opened because fumes were seeping into the house. She said she had heard him arrive home between 12.30am and 1am but had not realised anything was wrong until she went to get his other two daughters ready for school. His mother also checked for a pulse and confirmed he had died, while his wife, Dr Erika Scholtes, worked to get the children out of the house amid the chaos. An autopsy later confirmed he died from self-administered carbon monoxide poisoning, and he had left a suicide note inside the house along with a living will placed on the car roof.