A man accused of murdering his partner’s two-year-old daughter has told a court that he didn’t call 999 when he realised the toddler was dying because she was covered in bruises.

Giving evidence on his second day in the witness box at Ipswich Crown Court 24-year-old Scott Jeff described giving Isabella Wheildon CPR after she woke up gasping for breath.

”I got her out of her cot. She was floppy. It wasn’t a body that had life in it,” he said.

He said he put his head to Isabella’s chest and heard her heart beating but realised it was slowing down.

He said he had learned how to do CPR at college, and also tried to give Isabella mouth to mouth resuscitation.

He had also searched on the internet on how to do CPR on a baby to make sure he was doing it properly.

He claimed that during this time Isabella’s mother Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell had sat on the bed and hadn't done anything to help.

Jeff, who put his head on his hands and took a sip of water while describing his efforts to save Isabella, said there came a time when he "knew she was gone and there was no way she was coming back”.

Asked by his barrister Christopher Paxton KC why he hadn’t called 999, he said: “Because she had bruises on her. The bruises were everywhere."

He said he had noticed the bruises before that evening and denied causing them or seeing them being caused.

He accepted that he and his partner Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell were the only two people who had access to Isabella in the days before her death while they were staying at temporary housing at East Villa in Sidegate Lane, Ipswich, in June last year.

Jeff said that earlier on the day of Isabella’s death on June 26 he had returned to their room at East Villa to find Gleason-Mitchell mopping up blood.

He said Gleason-Mitchell claimed Isabella had injured herself by falling off the toilet.

Jeff also claimed he had threatened to contact social services after seeing bruises on Isabella’s face several days before her death.

Jeff and Gleason-Mitchell, both 24 and of no fixed address, have denied murdering Isabella between June 26-30 last year.

In addition to denying murder, Jeff has also denied causing or allowing the death of a child between June 26-30 last year and two offences of cruelty to a child.

Gleason-Mitchell has pleaded guilty to causing or allowing the death of a child and two offences of cruelty to a child under 16.

The court has heard that Isabella’s body was found in her pushchair in the shower of temporary housing at East Villa in Sidegate Lane, Ipswich in last year.

She had suffered extensive bruising all over her body, fractures to both her wrists and her pelvis caused by possible kicking or stamping in the weeks after Jeff started a relationship with Gleason- Mitchell.

It has been alleged that following Isabella’s death the couple had pushed her dead body around in her pushchair with the hood up for several days before leaving her body in Ipswich and fleeing to Bury St Edmunds where they were arrested

The trial continues.