Man who murdered nine-year-old girl as she played on street in Lincolnshire jailed
A man who killed a nine-year-old boy while playing on the street was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years.
Deividas Skebas, 26, stabbed Lilia Valutyte in the heart on July 28, 2022, in downtown Boston, Lincolnshire.
At that time, she was playing with a hula hoop in front of her mother’s embroidery shop.
At the hearing at Lincoln Crown Court, it was stated that there was no dispute that Skebas, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, killed Lilia.
However, the jury was asked to decide what his state of mind was at the time of the attack.
The Lithuanian citizen told police that he was being controlled by NASA.
He pleaded guilty to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility, but was found guilty of murder by a jury on February 5.
Skebas, formerly of Thorold Street in Boston, appeared via video link from the high-security Rampton Hospital in Nottinghamshire, wearing a navy blue zip-up jumper.
He stared ahead without reaction as his sentence was read by Mr Justice Choudhury on Wednesday.
In sentencing, the judge said Lilia was “as happy, lively a girl as a nine-year-old should be” and added that Skebas had inflicted a “shocking and horrific act of violence” on her.
He added: “He needed to be safe. He was playing in a pedestrian area, just meters away from his mother.”
Mr Justice Choudhury said Skebas had used drugs including cannabis and amphetamines that would “likely worsen” his schizophrenia.
It was initially thought that Skebas was unfit to stand trial but it was later claimed that despite his deteriorating mental health, he actually knew what he was doing, was trying to avoid detection and was planning to flee the country.
Christopher Donnellan KC, who opened the Crown’s case against Skebas in January, told jurors: “This premeditated murder was clearly an evil act. He knew his behavior was wrong. He knew he was killing a child.”
Mr Donnellan told the court on Wednesday: “This was a particularly vulnerable victim, a young girl aged nine. The crime was committed with some degree of planning or premeditation.”
Jurors heard Skebas prowled the area until things calmed down before stabbing the boy with a Sabatier paring knife he had bought from a Wilko store two days earlier.
In the days after the attack, Skebas shaved his beard, put the knife behind the radiator and made an effort to leave the country by boarding a bus to Lithuania.
Lina Savickiene, Lilia’s mother, who found the girl “covered in blood and with a ring around her” after the stabbing, said in a statement read by her husband Aurelijus Savickas on the day Skebas was sentenced: “This is not something you can recover from.
“Sometimes scary thoughts take over our minds and during this trial many, many more arise.
“Why him? Why us? The questions remain unanswered.”
The court heard Skebas was arrested two days after the attack but was transferred to hospital because his mental health was “deteriorating”.
He told detectives that he ate a piece of rice that he believed was actually a microchip and that it had the “power to resurrect” Lilia if police contacted his “controller at NASA.”
Defense barrister Andrew Campbell-Tiech KC said in mitigation that Skebas “remains a danger not only to himself but also to others in the absence of medication”.
