A man who stabbed a nine-year-old girl to death appeared “very calm” after he was taken into custody, a court heard today.
Lilia Valutyte was outside a shop where her mother was working in the centre of Boston, when she was attacked by Deividas Skebas on 28 July 2022.
Skebas, 26, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, denies murder but admits manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.
Prosecutors do not accept the defence of diminished responsibility and allege the murder of Lilia was “deliberate and planned.”
Skebas was arrested and taken into custody at Boston police station two days after the killing, a jury at Lincoln Crown Court was told.
The court heard evidence from senior medical clinician Laura Cross who visited Skebas in his cell on 30 July 2022.
Miss Cross said Skebas initially appeared “very calm,” “quite cool and calculated.”
She told the jury: “He gave me good eye contact for the majority of the time.”
Miss Cross said that situation only changed when she told him a child had been harmed.
“He looked a bit shaken, said ‘no, no’ and turned his head to the floor,” Miss Cross explained.
Jurors heard Skebas had previously been sectioned and detained in a UK mental health unit in 2020.
Miss Cross said she asked Skebas if he was still hearing voices. “He mentioned that he was feeling fine,” she stated.
“I asked him why he was in custody,” Miss Cross told the jury. “He said because he had been seen on CCTV.”
Skebas also admitted using cannabis and told Miss Cross that he had stopped using his medication a few months earlier, the jury heard.
She was later asked by the defence if she may have “missed one or two signs” of the “chronic and, perhaps, untreatable”, schizophrenia Skebas has been diagnosed with. She replied “no”.
Jurors have been told three psychiatrists agree Skebas suffers from schizophrenia.
Skebas, formerly of Thorold Street, Boston, denies murder on 28 July 2022.
The trial continues.
Image: PA Images
