A schizophrenic cannabis user who stabbed a nine-year-old girl to death as she played outside with her hula hoop has finally been jailed for her murder.

Fruit picker Deividas Skebas was told he would serve a minimum of 25 years for the ‘unthinkable’ attack on Lilia Valutyte – carried out just three weeks he returned to the UK from his native Lithuania.

He had lay in wait for other people to leave the street where she was playing with her sister before approaching the schoolgirl and stabbing her once through the heart. 

She died in her mother’s arms less than an hour later following the random attack in the early evening of July 28, 2022 in their hometown of Boston in Lincolnshire.

Skebas told police afterwards he was being controlled by a microchip implanted by NASA and detained in a secure hospital after he was initially found unfit to stand trial. 

He was found at a trial of fact in 2023 to have been responsible for Lilia’s murder but a hearing of this type is not considered a criminal prosecution. 

However last year he was reassessed and found to be fit to take part in a criminal trial, which begun in January, and where he was eventually found guilty of murder.

Setencing him at Lincoln Crown Court on Wednesday, Mr Justice Akhlaq Choudhury said CCTV from before the incident showed Lilia as a ‘carefree, happy girl’ who ‘should have been safe’ as she was playing with her hula hoop.

‘How could anyone imagine that within seconds she would be stabbed by a complete stranger and left to die? he said. ‘Yours was a shocking and horrific act of violence.’

‘Nothing I can do or say today can relieve the pain of losing Lilia.’

Skebas was not present in court and appeared via video link from Rampton Hospital, a high security psychiatric unit in Nottinghamshire. 

Wearing a navy blue zip-up jumper he stared ahead without reacting as his sentence was read out. 

Mr Justice Choudhury said Skebas had been a user of drugs including cannabis and amphetamines which would ‘likely worsen’ his schizophrenia. 

Skebas admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility but was convicted of murder by a jury

Lilia Valutyte was stabbed to death outside her mother’s embroidery shop in Boston, Lincs

The judge said Skebas had bought an ‘ordinary kitchen knife’ and walked around the same area in Boston, apparently in search of a victim.

‘You kept returning to the same area around Fountain Lane. At 18:15 you did the unthinkable,’ he said.  

‘You headed straight towards her, pulled out the knife and as soon as you approached the unsuspecting Lilia, you plunged the knife into her heart.’ 

Lilia’s mother heard her daughter’s scream and came out of her shop, Mr Justice Choudhury told the court.

‘As she did she saw what no parent should ever see,’ he said. 

‘The knife penetrtated her (Lilia’s) heart. She did not stand a chance.’

In setting the mininum term Skebas will serve behind bars Mr Justice Choudhury said the degree of planning and Lilia’s age were aggravating features.

‘Your victim, Lilia, was particularly vulnerable. She was just a little girl, aged nine,’ Mr Justice Choudury told Skebas.

Skebas, now 26, had denied murder but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to his schizophrenia. 

But his trial heard he was a regular cannabis user despite being aware of the impact it could have on his mental health.

After the murder he shaved his beard, hid the knife behind a radiator and made efforts to leave the country on a bus to Lithuania. 

Prosecutors said that at the time of the stabbing Skebas knew what he was doing and took actions to avoid detection.

They said that while the deterioration of his mental health after the incident was genuine, CCTV showed him buying a knife two days before the murder, prowling around the area before he killed Lilia and then fleeing the scene. 

Skebas will remain at Rampton Hospital where he will continue to serve his sentence unless he is moved to a prison by the Secretary of State. 

Police paid tribute to Lilia’s friends and family for their ‘remarkable strength, dignity, patience and understanding’ as they waited almost four years for him to face justice. 

In a moving victim victim impact statement read for her by her husband, Aurelijus Savickas, Lilia’s mother, Lina Savickiene, said her grief was ‘not something you recover from’. 

‘She was my firstborn. On the day she was born, we almost died – we for each other’s lives. And where are we now?

‘I was not, and am not, a very ‘maternal’ mother. I was always strict, but loving. 

‘We do not come into this world with a book that teaches us how to be parents, and when I think about how many things I could have done differently while she was alive … guilt does what it does best.

‘Over these years of loss, both I and my entire family have lived through so much. Tears and pain cannot wash away everything we feel. It is deeply painful to live through something whose consequences someone never truly thought through.’

Mrs Savickiene, who was elected as an independent local councillor after her daughter’s death, told how she had even visited Skebas’ hometown to try to find answers. 

A rather beautiful, fairly large town,’she said. ‘His mother owns a flower shop. There were so many thoughts, and I tried to understand – to feel – why? For what? I still cannot comprehend it.

‘Yet memories are the greatest gift. I am grateful to myself at least for this – that during those nine years, we lived fully and visited many places. We did not stand still.

‘Even though I so wanted to see her future … her choices, perhaps her children.

‘This is not something you recover from. The child will not return. Why her? Why us?

‘These questions remain unanswered.’   

Lina Savickiene mother of murdered Lilia Valutyte

Police bodycam footage shows the killer putting his arms up in surrender 

Pictured: He was seen on CCTV buying a knife from Wilko before carrying out the attack

Skebas admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility but was convicted of murder by a jury at Lincoln Crown Court

Mr Savickas, who became Lilia’s stepfather when she was three, said: ‘From that moment we walked our journey together. Becoming her stepfather was new for both of us but I loved her as my own and always tried to be there for her.

‘I have attended many funerals in my life, but nothing prepared me for losing a child. There are no words to describe that pain. It left scars on our hearts that will never fully heal.

‘It has been more than three-and-a-half years since she left us, yet it still feels unreal.

‘When Defence representative said that both sides are victims and that his family also are suffering his loss, I cannot agree. 

‘The person who committed the crime still has the ability to taste food, smell scents, choose who to communicate with and is able to live. As Lilia did not choose to die this can never be compared.

‘Meanwhile, the crime that was committed has affected our family the most, because we no longer have the opportunity to talk to Lilia, to touch her, or to share our thoughts with her, to see her grow up, to become an adult and live her life in any way.’

The jury heard Skebas was previously detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act during 2020 after he showed signs of psychosis when attacking another person with a pepper spray.

Skebas was discharged from the hospital to his native Lithuania but legally returned to the UK via Folkstone on July 2, 2022.

He arrived in Boston where he shared a multi-occupancy home in Thorold Street, living in the TV room, with one resident understanding he was on holiday from Lithuania.

Jurors were shown CCTV footage of Skebas buying a Sabatier paring knife from a Boston branch of Wilkos on July 26. 

Chilling CCTV footage played to the court shows the moment Skebas watched Lilia play with her hula hoop before stabbing her.

The video shows Skebas, who was 22 at the time, standing at the end of the road whilst the nine-year-old plays outside of her mother’s embroidery shop. 

Skebas can be seen waiting at the top of the road for passers-by to leave, before walking towards Lilia at around 6.15pm. 

Another CCTV clip shows Skebas, wearing a grey T-shirt and dark trousers, running away from the scene moments later.

An off-duty police officer initially gave chase after hearing ‘noises of distress’, but Skebas escaped.

Her mother told how she working in her embroidery shop while Lilia played outside on the street with a hula hoop when she heard ‘mum’.

She told how she rushed outside to find Lilia covered in blood with the hula-hoop still around her.  

‘She was getting pale,’ she told last month’s trial. ‘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.’

Andrew Campbell-Tiech, in mitigation, said Skebas was ‘subject to a serious and dangerous condition for many years’.

He said he ‘is likely to spend much of the rest of his life contained and confined’ and said there was ‘no need further to stigmatise the appalling act that he [Skebas] performed in the midst of a mental health crisis’.

Marc Thompson, a District Crown Prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service East Midlands, said: ‘We were determined that the perpetrator of this crime would face the full force of justice for what he did.

‘Our case has always been that this was an unspeakable, deliberate act and not, as Skebas has claimed, the result of a mental abnormality.’

Mr Thompson continued: ‘This has been a lengthy process for Lilia’s family and loved ones, as they have been forced to wait for Skebas to be fit to take part in this trial.’