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Man who killed partner’s two-year-old daughter before taking her body to pub and shops jailed | UK news

Man who killed partner’s two-year-old daughter before taking her body to pub and shops jailed | UK news

A man who killed his partner’s two-year-old daughter before taking her body in a pram to pubs and shops has been jailed for life.

Warning: This article contains details that readers may find disturbing

Scott Jeff, 24, had found guilty last month of the murder of Isabella Wheildon, as well as two counts of child cruelty after an eight-week trial at Ipswich Crown Court. He will serve at least 26 years in prison.

Judge Judge Neil Garnham said Jeff subjected Isabella to a “cruel campaign of violence and abuse which ended in her death” on June 26 last year.

Jeff, who was not the baby’s father, was in a relationship with her mother, former daycare worker Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, also 24.

Gleason-Mitchell was cleared of murder but pleaded guilty to causing or permitting the death of a child and two counts of child cruelty. She appeared to be shaking in the dock as she was jailed for 10 years.

Scott Jeff and Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell. Picture: Suffolk Police
Image:
Scott Jeff and Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell. Picture: Suffolk Police

The judge described her as a “weak and spineless person” who “kept standing back and allowed that abuse and violence to happen to your little girl”.

He said she was “so concerned with her own comfort and pleasure and maintaining a relationship with this man that you would tolerate anything, including these horrific attacks on your daughter”.

Isabella was found in a stroller in a locked bathroom in a temporary housing facility Ipswich in June last year.

“Rising Brutality”

The court heard she suffered injuries to her head, neck, torso and limbs after suffering “escalating brutality”.

The couple took Isabella on holiday to the Norfolk coast, where they first stayed in hotels, then spent four nights in a tent on the beach in Caister and began looking for council accommodation.

The court heard that Jeff would punish Isabella when she got wet with her injuries hidden with a puffer jacket and sunglasses.

Her arms were fractured and her pelvis was “actually shattered” when Jeff either punched her or “kicked her with tremendous force between the legs”, leading to her death hours later, a said the judge.

Prosecutors said Isabella died of “bone marrow embolism caused by skeletal trauma.”

Traces of cocaine and cannabis were also found in the child’s system.

Sally Howes KC told jurors the child was a “healthy, content and well looked after little girl until Scott Jeff entered her young life” towards the end of May 2023.

From then on, she suffered “an escalating brutality that was callous, cruel and ultimately fatal” at Jeff’s hands.

An autopsy found Isabella had “extensive external traumatic injuries to the soft tissues of her body, including her head, neck, trunk, limbs” and other areas, the lawyer said, adding that her mother “did nothing and allowed this ( the abuse)”. to happen”.

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The body pushed into the cart

Jeff and Gleason-Mitchell, both of no fixed address but formerly of Bedfordshire, had been staying in temporary accommodation for 11 days when Isabella’s body was discovered on June 30.

Prosecutors said she died on June 26 after having trouble breathing. Jeff and Gleason-Mitchell claimed they tried to perform CPR on her, but she died at 11:37 p.m.

CCTV footage showed the couple heading out to the shops 30 minutes later and were shown joking around, seemingly unaffected by Isabella’s death.

For the next three days, they pushed the toddler’s body in a pram, even took the bus into town to go shopping and went to the pub.

The judge told Gleason-Mitchell: “You felt able to go shopping with Jeff, the two of you pushing Isabella’s body in a pram covered with a blanket, as if you were enjoying a family day out.”

He said the pair eventually left Isabella’s body in a bathroom at a homeless hostel and took a train to Bury St Edmunds, where Gleason-Mitchell was seen “sitting happily with a glass of I come into a pub…smiling and laughing’.

The pair were arrested in the early hours of July 1 in Bury St Edmunds after fleeing Ipswich after police found Isabella’s body.