A schizophrenic woman had her charges dropped Friday for the murder of a 7-year-old girl, whose throat she slit with a craft knife back on Mother’s Day, Manchester Evening News Reported.
Eltiona Skana denied murdering the child but pleaded guilty to manslaughter at a prior hearing, according to Manchester Evening News. She will face sentencing Tuesday for manslaughter. Mother’s Day is celebrated on March 22 in the United Kingdom.
The child, Emily Jones, was riding her scooter to meet her mother when she was attacked by Skana, who had been sitting on a waiting bench. Skana then grabbed Jones and sliced her neck with the knife she had bought the morning of the crime, the court was told, according to Manchester Evening News.
Schizophrenic woman who slit girl’s throat cleared of murder charge https://t.co/awoxHetbaO pic.twitter.com/f9Pwv0M0Nj
— New York Post (@nypost) December 4, 2020
Jones’s father, Mark Jones, had taken her to meet her mother, Sarah Barnes, at Queen’s Park in Bolton, where she ultimately faced her demise. (RELATED: REPORT: Man Killed Two-Year-Old After He Was Interrupted Watching Porn)
“We are beyond devastated that this random act of violence means that we will never get to see our beautiful little girl grow up into the wonderful young lady she was showing such promise of becoming,” her parents said in a tribute earlier this year. “It is truly heartbreaking to wake up to a world without Emily in it and we cannot comprehend why this has happened.”
Following her arrest, Skana was detained under the Mental Health Act, according to The Sun.
The testimony from a forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Saifullah Syed Afghan, who treated Skana at a high-security mental health facility, said there was no other explanation for her offense outside of her diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, Manchester Evening News reported.
Skana did not have face-to-face contact with her psychiatrists from mid-December of 2019 until March 11, The Sun reported. When police raided her home following her arrest, they found around a month’s worth of untaken, anti-psychotic drugs.
Prosecution Barrister Michael Brady told the jury that the prosecution does not wish to have Skana charged with murder and requests that she be found not guilty of that crime.
“It is a decision taken with care and mindful of the sensitivity of this case,” Brady said.
The prosecution determined there was “no longer any realistic expectation” that Skana would be convicted of murder, according to Brady.
Skana had moved to the UK from Albania in 2014 along with her family and had a history of mental illness. In 2017, she stabbed her mother and attacked her sister in two separate instances. She has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital on three separate occasions, The Sun reported.
In the tribute following the death of their daughter, Jones’s parents said she was the “light of their lives”.
“Emily was 7-years-old, our only child and the light of our lives,” they said. “She was always full of joy and laughter. Emily had such a cheeky smile and was beautiful inside and out. She had a heart as big as her smile.”