Man who stabbed girl, 9, to death while she played in street jailed for 25 years

A schizophrenic man who stabbed a nine-year-old girl in the heart in a ‘wicked’ unprovoked attack has been jailed for at least 25 years.

Lilia Valutyte was killed by Deividas Skebas, 26, in July 2022 while she was playing with a hula hoop in the street outside her mum’s embroidery shop in Boston, Lincolnshire.

Skebas denied murdering Lilia but admitted manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility, citing a history of illnesses including schizophrenia.

He was convicted of murder by a jury at Lincoln Crown Court, who were told by prosecutor Christopher Donnellan KC: ‘This deliberate murder was clearly a wicked act. He knew his conduct was wrong. He knew he was killing a child.’

Today, he was jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years.

In his sentencing remarks, judge Mr Justice Choudhury said Lilia was a ‘happy, lively girl as carefree as any nine-year-old should be’, adding that Skebas committed a ‘shocking and horrific act of violence’ on her.

He added: ‘She should have been safe. She was playing in a pedestrianised area and just yards away from her mum.’

During the trial Mr Donnellan said Lilia had been ‘in and out’ of the shop and her mum Lina Savickiene checked her ‘quite often’, before she heard her child call out for help.

He said: ‘The street, not accessible to through-traffic, was empty. Barely anyone was about, it was quiet. Lilia was playing with a hula hoop around her.

‘The defendant, Deividas Skebas, was waiting. He waited while other pedestrians moved out of the way. When they left the immediate area and had gone… he approached from the Wormgate end of Fountain Lane.’

Mr Donnellan said Skebas’s pace ‘quickened’ before he took a knife out from his back pocket.

The prosecutor continued: ‘He put the knife straight into the middle of Lilia and the force of it appears to have knocked her back towards some shutters on the adjoining shop.

‘That stab wound went straight through her heart and she fell there in the street. He ran off.’

In a statement, Mrs Savickiene said she found the girl ‘covered in blood and with the hoop around her’ after the stabbing.

He added: ‘She was getting pale. She collapsed in my hands. I saw the wounds, started to cover them.

‘I just got scared, started to shout for somebody to help me.’

Jurors heard Lilia was declared dead within an hour of the attack.

Skebas had bought a Sabatier paring knife from a Wilko shop in the town two days before he killed Lilia, the jury was told.

In the days after the attack, Skebas shaved his beard, tucked the knife behind a radiator and made efforts to leave the country on a bus to Lithuania.

The court heard that Skebas was arrested on July 30 but his mental health was ‘declining’ so he was transferred to hospital.

After he was arrested, he said there was a ‘form of control over him and his actions’, referring to Nasa and a microchip.

Defending, Andrew Campbell-Tiech KC told the jury Skebas was ‘quite obviously deluded’.

He said clinicians treating the killer doubted he will recover.

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