WARNING, DISTRESSING CONTENT: Jurors at Ipswich Crown Court yesterday (December 13) heard how the toddler suffered grim injuries from her mother’s partner and was left under a blanket in the shower
A grim couple left a two-year-old girl lying dead in the shower for days, after the mother’s boyfriend kicked the toddler to death.
Isabella Wheildon, 2, was “healthy, contented and well-cared for” according to prosecutor Sally Howes KC. This was before the harrowing abuse that she would go onto face after her mum Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell started going out with Scott Jeff. A court heard how the little girl died tragically while in a temporary housing unit in Ipswich, with her body found on June 30, 2023 after being buried by blankets in a shower.
Jurors at Ipswich Crown Court during Gleason-Mitchell’s murder trial heard the toddler had suffered “extensive external traumatic injuries to the soft tissues of the body including head, neck, torso, limbs” and other areas. Injuries to her pelvis were consistent with “stomping or kicking”, while Gleason-Mitchell allegedly “stood back, watched, did nothing and allowed this to happen”.
The judge told 24-year-old Gleason-Mitchell: “You felt able to go shopping with Jeff, the two of you pushing Isabella’s body around in a pushchair covered with a blanket, as if you were enjoying a family day out.”
He added the pair had left Isabella’s dead body in a bathroom at a hostel for the homeless before casually grabbing a train to Bury St Edmunds. Here, Gleason-Mitchell was seen “sitting happily with a glass of wine in a pub … smiling and laughing.”
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The pair were arrested in the early hours of July 1, while Jeff was jailed for life for the girl’s murder and was told he would serve a minimum of 26 years in jail. Gleason-Mitchell was jailed for 10 years for causing or allowing Isabella’s death.
Judge Mr Justice Neil Garnham, sentenced both at Ipswich Crown Court on Friday, December 13, and said Jeff, also 24, subjected Isabella to a “cruel campaign of violence and abuse which ended in her death on June 26”.