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A man who stabbed a nine-year-old girl to death in 2022 has been found guilty of her murder.
Deividas Skebas, a 26-year-old Lithuanian man, killed Lilia Valutyte by stabbing her through the heart while the child was playing with a hula hoop outside her mother’s embroidery shop in Boston, Lincolnshire, on 28 July 2022.
Skebas, then 22, had entered the UK legally just three weeks before killing Lilia, and was working as a fruit picker. He had a history of illnesses, including schizophrenia, which his legal defence argued stopped him from understanding the full extent of his actions.
A jury in Lincoln crown court deliberated for seven and a half hours on Thursday, eventually returning a guilty verdict by a majority of 11 to one.
Lilia’s mother, Lina Savickiene, in a victim impact statement read out by her husband and Lilia’s stepfather, Aurelijus Savickas, wrote that the grief the family had suffered was “not something you recover from”.
Savickiene, who had found her daughter after the attack and cradled her body, wrote that “sometimes terrifying thoughts overwhelm the mind and during this trial there have been many, many more. Why her? Why us? The questions remain unanswered.”
Reading his own words, Savickas, who had known Lilia since she was three, described his stepdaughter as having a “beautiful soul”, adding that she “will always live in our hearts, you are forever loved, forever missed”.
During the trial, the prosecutor Christopher Donnellan KC said that “this deliberate murder was clearly a wicked act” and that Skebas was aware of the severity of the crime when he committed it, adding: “He knew his conduct was wrong. He knew he was killing a child.”
Representing Skebas, Andrew Campbell-Tiech KC told the jury that there was no debate about the fact that his client had killed Lilia, but that his mental state meant he should instead be convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, which he had previously admitted.
Campbell-Tiech went on to describe Skebas as “quite obviously deluded” and said that clinicians who had treated him doubted he would recover. Skebas attended the trial and verdict virtually from Rampton hospital, a high security psychiatric hospital, to which was transferred from prison in December 2022.
The court also heard that after the killing, Skebas believed he had “the power to resurrect” Lilia but could only do so if the police contacted “his controller in Nasa”.
Skebas is due to be sentenced on 25 February.
