30-year-old Eltiona Skana, a mentally ill woman who murdered a 7-year-old girl in a park in front of her parents on Mother’s Day, has been found not guilty on account of her mental illness.
Skana, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, but for some reason, the prosecution directed the jury to find her not guilty on mental health grounds, according to The Sun.
The victim is little Emily Jones, who was killed as she was playing on her scooter in Queen’s Park, Bolton, on March 22nd, Mother’s Day. The girl’s mother Sarah Barnes, and her father Mark Jones, were jogging nearby when the attack occurred.
Skana was sitting on a park bench concealing a craft knife as Emily passed her. When the young girl was in front of her, Skana suddenly got up and grabbed the little girl, then slashed her throat.
Skana is originally from Albania but has been living in the UK since 2014. On the day of the attack, she purchased a pack of three knives from a shop in Bolton town centre. Just before the attack, witnesses reported a woman in the park looking ‘agitated’.
After the attack, Skana fled the scene and placed the knife in her backpack, where it was later recovered when she was arrested by police.
Witness Tony Canty was also in the park when he heard screaming and saw Skana ‘manhandling’ the young girl and pushing her to the ground. Canty and other witnesses chased Skana off and found that the young girl had been stabbed, then her parents realized what was happening.
After running, Skana fell down and Mr. Canty was able to detain her until the police arrived.
Emily had suffered cardiac arrest and was airlifted to Salford Royal hospital, where she was pronounced dead shortly before 4 pm.
When police later raided her flat after the arrest they found a stash of untaken, anti-psychotic drugs. Police experts later estimated that there was about a month’s worth of untaken medication in the house.
After making a very strong case against the woman in court, prosecution barrister Michael Brady QC reversed course and told the jury the CPS was no longer pursuing a murder charge.
He asked them to find Skana not guilty of that offence, citing evidence from Dr. Saifullah Syed Afghan on her diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.
