Who is a man? A nine-year-old girl was stabbed to death In 2022, she was found guilty of murder.
A 26-year-old Lithuanian man, Dividas Schebas, stabbed Lilia Valutiet through the heart as the child played with a hula hoop outside her mother’s embroidery shop in Boston. Lincolnshireon 28 July 2022.
Schebas, 22, had entered the UK legally just three weeks before killing Lilia and was working as a fruit picker. He has a history of illnesses, including schizophrenia, which his legal defense argued prevented him from understanding the full extent of his actions.
A jury at Lincoln Crown Court deliberated for seven-and-a-half hours on Thursday and eventually returned a guilty verdict by a majority of 11 to one.
In a victim impact statement read by Lilia’s mother, Lina Savikien, her husband and Lilia’s stepfather, Aurilijus Savikas, the family’s grief was “not something you can recover from.”
Savikeen, who found her daughter and placed her body in a cradle after the attack, said, “Sometimes horrors flood the mind and there’s more to this investigation. Why her? Why us? The questions are unanswered.”
Reading her own words, Savikas, who had known Lilia since she was three, described her stepdaughter as a “beautiful soul”, adding that she would “live in our hearts forever, you will always be loved, forever missed”.
During the trial, prosecutor Christopher Donnellan KC said “this premeditated murder was clearly an act of malice” and that Schebas knew the gravity of the crime when he committed it: “He knew his behavior was wrong. He knew he was killing a child.”
Andrew Campbell-Teich, representing Schebas, told the KC jury that there was no debate about the fact that his client had killed Lilia, but that his state of mind meant he should be charged with manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. He has admitted in the past.
Campbell-Teich described Schebas as “very clearly delirious” and the doctors who treated him doubted that he would ever recover. In December 2022 Schebas attended the trial and sentencing virtually from Rampton Hospital, a high security psychiatric hospital transferred from the prison.
The court also heard that after the murder, Schebas believed he had the power to “resurrect” Lilia, but could only do so if police contacted “his controller at NASA”.
Schebas is scheduled to be sentenced on February 25.
