![\"Lilia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/skynews-lilia-valutyte-courts_7146405.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA man who stabbed a nine-year-old girl outside her mother’s embroidery shop has been jailed for a minimum of 25 years. <\/p>\n
Deividas Skebas, 26, stabbed Lilia Valutyte in the heart as she played with a hula hoop in Boston, Lincolnshire, on 28 July 2022.<\/p>\n
Skebas, a Lithuanian who has schizophrenia, had denied murder but admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility.<\/p>\n
Lilia’s mother, Lina Savickiene, said she found her daughter “covered in blood and with the hoop around her”.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Image:
\n Lilia Valutyte<\/p>\n
An off-duty police officer tried to help save Lilia, but their efforts were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Skebas 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.<\/p>\n