Man with schizophrenia gets life for girl's murder

A 26-year-old man diagnosed with schizophrenia has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years for the murder of nine-year-old Lilia Valutyte, whom he stabbed in the heart while she played with a hula hoop in a pedestrianized street in Boston, Lincolnshire, on July 28, 2022.

Deividas Skebas, a Lithuanian national formerly living on Thorold Street in Boston, carried out the attack outside Lilia's mother's embroidery shop in the town center. Witnesses and court evidence described how Skebas had purchased a Sabatier paring knife from a local Wilko store two days earlier. He prowled the area, waiting for it to quiet down, before approaching Lilia from the end of Fountain Lane. As she twirled the hula hoop, he quickened his pace, removed the knife from his back pocket and plunged it into her chest with such force that it knocked her backward onto nearby shop shutters. Lilia called out for help, and her mother, Lina Savickiene, rushed out to find her daughter covered in blood, with the hoop still around her. An off-duty police officer, Detective Constable Andrew Pearson, who was nearby, initially pursued Skebas but returned upon hearing distress calls to...