Man who stabbed nine-year-old to death in Lincolnshire found guilty of murder | Lincolnshire
The man who stabbed a nine-year-old girl to death in 2022 was found guilty of murdering the girl.
Deividas Skebas, a 26-year-old Lithuanian, killed Lilia Valutyte by stabbing her in the heart on July 28, 2022, while she was playing with a hula hoop outside her mother’s embroidery shop in Boston, Lincolnshire.
Skebas, then 22, had entered the UK legally just three weeks before he killed Lilia and was working as a fruit picker. He had a history of illness, including schizophrenia, and his legal defense argued that it prevented him from understanding the full scope of his actions.
A jury at Lincoln crown court deliberated for seven-and-a-half hours on Thursday and eventually returned a guilty verdict by a majority of 11 to one.
In a victim impact statement read by her husband and Lilia’s stepfather, Aurelijus Savickas, Lina Savickiene, Lilia’s mother, wrote that the pain she and her family were experiencing “is not something that can be treated.”
Savickiene, who found her daughter and cradled her body after the attack, wrote that “sometimes terrible thoughts take over minds, and during this trial many, many more emerged. Why her? Why us? The questions remain unanswered.”
Reading her own words, Savickas, who has known Lilia since she was three, said her stepdaughter had a “beautiful soul” and added, “you will always live in our hearts, you will be loved forever, you will be missed forever.”
At the hearing, prosecutor Christopher Donnellan KC stated that “This premeditated murder was clearly an evil act”, stating that Skebas was aware of the seriousness of the crime when he did this, adding: “He knew that his behavior was wrong. He knew that he had killed a child.”
Andrew Campbell-Tiech KC, representing Skebas, told the jury there was no dispute his client killed Lilia but his mental state meant he should be convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, as he had previously accepted.
Campbell-Tiech described Skebas as “quite clearly delusional” and said the clinicians who treated him doubted he would recover. Skebas attended the hearing and verdict virtually from Rampton hospital, a high-security psychiatric hospital where he was transferred from prison in December 2022.
The court also heard that after the murder Skebas believed he had the “power to resurrect” Lilia, but could only do so if police contacted his “controller at NASA”.
Skebas is expected to be sentenced on February 25.
