He only knew her for 36 days, enough to kill her. A 24-year-old man was convicted of murder after causing the death of Isabella Jonas-Wheildon, a little girl barely 2 years old, the BBC reported this Saturday, November 23. He was in a relationship with the child's mother.
Scott Jeff was found guilty after an eight-week trial, while Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, the girl's mother, was acquitted of murder charges against him but convicted of “inducing or permitting” his dead. Their sentence will be established at a hearing set for December 13, details the Suffolk police in a press release.
Traces of cocaine and cannabis in the blood
The body of the little girl was found on June 30, 2023 in a stroller in an apartment in Ipswich, in the east of England, where the couple had been living for ten days. Isabella's mother and stepfather were then arrested around forty kilometers the day after the discovery of the body, while they were on the run. The two 24-year-old adults were quickly charged with murder, but also with “cruelty” after traces of cocaine and cannabis were found in Isabella’s blood.
It was a friend of the couple who raised the alarm after Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell told her by telephone that “something serious” had happened and that Isabella was dead. She contacted the police who managed to locate the place where the two 24-year-olds lived and found the child's body. She died on the evening of June 26, four days earlier, according to medical findings and the couple's confessions.
They say Isabella started having difficulty breathing and they tried to give her CPR, without success. The mother told investigators that she looked at her watch when she realized her daughter was dead: it was 11:37 p.m. And the horror didn't stop there, because 30 minutes later, surveillance cameras filmed the couple running errands in the middle of the night, laughing, as if nothing had just happened.
Bills on the wrists and pelvis
Medical monitoring of the child made it possible to establish with certainty that the beatings could only be attributed to Scott Jeff, because no examination had previously revealed trauma or injuries. The ordeal endured by the little girl is such that numerous post-mortem examinations were necessary to establish the causes of her death: a bone marrow embolism and overall skeletal trauma.
Isabella had fractures to both wrists and her pelvis, caused by being kicked or stepped on. Numerous bruises were noted all over his body. The embolism to which she succumbed was caused by the penetration of her bone marrow into her blood system.
All of the little girl's injuries have been dated as occurring after her meeting with Scott Jeff, who became involved with Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell during the month of May 2023. The fractures in Isabella's wrist would have occurred on June 12, two weeks before his death. According to witnesses, she was seen with her mother and stepfather a few days before her death, wearing a coat and sunglasses. A covering outfit to hide his injuries, while the temperatures were particularly high.
