A man who stabbed a nine-year-old girl outside her mother’s embroidery shop has been jailed for a minimum of 25 years.
Deividas Skebas, 26, stabbed Lilia Valutyte in the heart as she played with a hula hoop in Boston, Lincolnshire, on 28 July 2022.
Skebas, a Lithuanian who has schizophrenia and moved back to the UK just weeks before the attack, had denied murder but admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility.
Lilia’s mother, Lina Savickiene, said she found her daughter “covered in blood and with the hoop around her”.
She initially thought “something might have happened” with the hula hoop and described shouting for help while attempting to cover her daughter’s wounds as she became pale.
Lilia Valutyte
An off-duty police officer tried to help save Lilia, but their efforts were unsuccessful.
Skebas was judged mentally unfit to stand trial in 2023, but that assessment changed in spring 2025 and a criminal trial began at Lincoln Crown Court in January this year.
Jurors were told there was no dispute he had killed Lilia but they had to decide what his state of mind was at the time of the attack.
Prosecutors said he had known what he was doing in stabbing Lilia – who would have turned 13 this year – and tried to avoid being caught.
Skebas, formerly of Thorold Street in Boston, appeared by video-link from high security facility Rampton Hospital in Nottinghamshire wearing a navy blue zip-up jumper and stared ahead without reacting as his sentence was read out by Mr Justice Choudhury on Wednesday.
In his sentencing remarks, the judge 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.”
Mr Justice Choudhury said Skebas had been a user of drugs including cannabis and amphetamines which would “likely worsen” his schizophrenia.
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