Paranoid schizophrenic who slit seven-year-old girl’s throat in Bolton park loses appeal against sentence

A woman who slit the throat of a seven-year-old girl as she played in a park on Mother’s Day has lost an appeal against her sentence.

Paranoid schizophrenic Eltiona Skana, 31, was sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2020 for the killing of Emily Jones in a park in Bolton, and her minimum term was set at 10 years and eight months.

She challenged both the sentence and the minimum term at the Court of Appeal in London on Wednesday.

Her lawyers argued she should instead have been given a hospital order with restrictions, and said her minimum term was too long.

But her appeal was rejected by three senior judges.

Skana attended the hearing via videolink from high-security Rampton Hospital where she is a patient under the Mental Health Act.

She admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility but was put on trial for murder. The trial collapsed and the prosecution offered no further evidence after hearing from the psychiatrist treating Skana.

Passing sentence at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, in December 2020, Mr Justice Wall ordered that Skana serve her sentence at Rampton Hospital and be subject to restrictions under the Mental Health Act, only to be released if she no longer posed a risk to the public.

He said that despite her mental illness, Skana retained “a significant amount of responsibility”, which merited punishment by him passing not a hospital order but a “hybrid” order, meaning the defendant would go to prison for the remainder of her eight-year sentence if her condition improved sufficiently.

Dismissing her appeal, Lady Justice Macur said the Crown Court judge was entitled to reach the conclusions he did as to both the nature of the sentence and the minimum term.

Emily had been taken to the park by her father Mark Jones, then 49, on March 22 2020, the afternoon of Mother’s Day, and was on her scooter when she spotted her mother, solicitor Sarah Barnes, 42 at the time, who was jogging.

Emily said “daddy, daddy, I want to go to mum”, and scooted off.

As she did, she passed Skana, alone on a bench armed with a knife bought earlier that day.

Skana stood up, pulled her hood up and grabbed the girl, slitting her throat before running away, but was tackled to the ground nearby by a member of the public, Tony Canty.

The Albanian national, who first came to the UK in 2014 after claiming asylum, had a long history of mental illness and had not been taking her anti-psychotic medication.

Lady Justice Macur said the case involved a difficult sentencing exercise for the judge, as well as difficulties for the lawyers involved.

She added: “Those difficulties, however, pale into insignificance when we consider the trauma and tragedy that befell Emily’s family on March 22 and will no doubt live with them throughout the rest of their lives.

“We express our deepest sympathies for Emily’s loss. Words cannot adequately encompass the grief that her family and friends have been subject to.”