A mother who allegedly pushed her dead toddler in a buggy for days told a court today how her partner had subjected the girl to beatings and cold showers and made her wear sunglasses to hide bruising on her face.
Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell and Scott Jeff were allegedly caught on CCTV visiting a pub and shops with the body of two-year-old Isabella Wheildon after she died in their care.
Both deny murdering the vulnerable little girl, although Gleason-Mitchell has admitted allowing the death of her daughter.
Pathologists have said the multiple fractures Isabella suffered to her pelvis before she died could only have been inflicted with ‘considerable force’ and were comparable to injuries from a car crash.
Giving evidence today, Gleason-Mitchell, 24, described how she had seen her daughter bleeding from her genital area while lying on her Paw Patrol towel at a homeless unit in Ipswich, Suffolk.
Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell told a court how her partner, Scott Jeff, had subjected her daughter Isabella Wheildon to beatings and cold showers and made her wear sunglasses to hide bruises
Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, 24, was seen pushing the battered body of two-year-old Isabella Wheildon in a buggy with partner Scott Jeff for three days after the little girl’s death
Pathologists said the multiple fractures Isabella suffered to her pelvis before she died could only have been inflicted with ‘considerable force’ and were comparable to car crash injuries
Asked if Jeff could have caused the terrible injuries, she said: ‘I witnessed him kicking her in that area constantly and punching her. It was more than once.’
Three days before Isabella died on June 26 last year, the defendant said she had been ‘worried that something bad was going to happen to her because of how many times she was attacked or assaulted’.
The jury was shown CCTV of the trio travelling on a train from Great Yarmouth to Ipswich on June 19 after they had been offered the emergency accommodation.
Jeff could be seen carrying Isabella, who was wearing the dark glasses he had allegedly given her to cover up her black eyes and heavy bruising.
A video clip from Jeff’s phone that was also played in court showed him interacting with the two-year-old as they sat with Gleason-Mitchell in a council’s housing office.
He could be heard telling her: ‘I am going to stab you… Do you want Daddy to give you a knife?’
Gleason-Mitchell claimed to have also seen him making a gun gesture towards her daughter, but dismissed it as him being ‘just annoyed’.
She gave context to his actions by stating guns and knives had been discussed with a housing officer.
Gleason-Mitchell said she had a three-month relationship with Jeff in 2019 which ended because he ‘led me into drugs’ including cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy.
She then met Thomas Wheildon in December 2019 and quickly fell pregnant with Isabella.
The couple split in May last year and ensuing arguments about access to their daughter led to an incident with an imitation firearm, with police called.
CCTV from June shows Jeff carrying Isabella, who was wearing the dark glasses he had allegedly given her to cover up her black eyes and heavy bruising
Gleason-Mitchell gave up her job as a nursery childcare worker because she believed she was going to be put into temporary accommodation in Northampton and would not be able to get to work as she couldn’t drive.
Around this time she met up with Jeff again and he instantly decided Isabella must be his daughter when they met in a park because she ‘looked like him’.
Feeling ‘wanted’ and ‘loved’, Gleason-Mitchell said they went on a weekend break to Great Yarmouth but decided to stay on as Isabella ‘liked being beside the seaside’.
The couple tried to get housing, with Gleason-Mitchell falsely claiming she had been kicked out of her home in Bedfordshire and was fleeing domestic violence.
Isabella, pictured here on a swing with her mother Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, was found dead at a homeless unit in Ipswich, Suffolk
Isabella, pictured here wearing a pink Minnie Mouse dress, sustained multiple fractures and soft tissue injuries before she died in June 2023
They rented a caravan at a holiday park for a few nights and Jeff began to take on the ‘everyday care’ of Isabella, the witness told the jury.
She said Jeff began physically abusing her daughter when they moved into a hotel in the town. He was potty training her and would punish her if there were ‘accidents’.
‘He would smack her on the hand. It started with the left and then went on the right,’ she told Ipswich Crown Court.
‘He was smacking with force. I said that is not the way she should get punished.’
Jeff also put Isabella naked in cold showers as punishment and kicked her and slapped her in the face when he ‘wasn’t in a good mood’ because he ‘needed some drugs’.
The couple next moved to stay in a tent on the beach at Caister-on-Sea, the jury were told.
Gleason-Mitchell said she noticed her daughter had a ‘yellowy bruise’ on her cheeks, as well as marks on both hands and her arms.
The alleged abuse continued when they moved again, this time to nearby Wild Duck holiday park.
‘At Wild Duck, if she had accidents, he would put her in cold showers again and was throwing her on the floor and hitting her,’ Gleason-Mitchell told the court.
‘I told him to stop but he just pushed me out of the way and said he had control of her now.’
The jury was played a video of Jeff, also 24, asking Isabella ‘Who is the bad man who hurt you?’, with her replying: ‘Thomas.’
Gleason-Mitchell insisted the toddler’s father had never hurt her and the purpose of the video was to show it to police if they were ever questioned about her injuries.
The court was told that Jeff beat Isabella and put her naked in cold showers as punishment if she had accidents while potty training or because he was in a mood and ‘needed some drugs’
Describing her daughter’s last moments alive, the defendant said she was lying in her cot ‘trying to speak’.
Jeff ‘quickly lifted her out of the cot’ and she started CPR before Jeff took over, but it ‘eventually became clear that she had died’.
Prosecutors say the defendants wheeled Isabella’s body around for three days after she died, even taking it on a shopping trip in Ipswich and visiting a pub.
Police discovered the girl covered in blankets in a bathroom at the homeless unit after receiving a tip-off from a friend of Gleason-Mitchell’s, who had been told in a call that she was dead.
A post-mortem examination revealed in addition to the broken pelvis she had two broken ribs, multiple bruises and soft tissue injuries.
Her cause of death was given as an embolism due to bone marrow from her fractures entering her lungs.
Asked today by Sasha Wass KC defending, if she had caused any of the injuries, Gleason-Mitchell replied: ‘No.’
Gleason-Mitchell and Jeff, formerly of Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, have denied murdering Isabella between June 26 and June 30 last year.
Jeff has also denied causing or allowing the death of a child and two offences of cruelty to a child.
But Gleason-Mitchell has pleaded guilty to causing or allowing the death of a child and two offences of cruelty to a child.
Prosecutors say Gleason-Mitchell ‘stood back, watched and did nothing’ as Jeff carried out his ‘callous, cruel and ultimately fatal’ assaults.
The trial continues.