The father of a killed schoolgirl has blamed mental healthcare services for failing to properly monitor the woman who ended his daughter’s life.

Eltiona Skana, 30, who has paranoid schizophrenia, admitted to killing seven-year-old Emily Jones after slitting her throat in a Bolton park on Mother’s Day.

Skana was cleared of murder on Friday after the prosecution dropped the charge. She instead pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Emily’s devastated dad, Mark Jones, said Skana was a ‘ticking time bomb’ and has demanded that Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust apologise to his family for a series of failures.

A court heard Skana had not been taking her anti-psychotic medication and that she was only assessed once in the three months leading up to Emily’s death. A jury were also told the defendant had a history of violence.

According the Mail on Sunday, an internal NHS report revealed Skana had previously ‘threatened a 13-year-old girl while possibly armed with a knife – but this disturbing incident was not included in her risk assessment’.

It also reportedly said the defendant’s sister ‘had warned staff “early on in her illness” that Skana refused to take her anti-psychotic tablets’.

A serious incident review commissioned by the Trust after Emily’s death concluded that the killing could not have been ‘predicted or prevented’ and that Skana was ‘managed appropriately given the clinical findings.’

Emily’s father told the MOS: ‘It is absolute nonsense. They are just trying to relinquish all responsibility – and she was their responsibility.’

Mr Jones added: ‘They knew she didn’t comply with oral medication but they allowed her to take it on her own volition – that is a ridiculous thing to do. She was a ticking time bomb.’

He said he now wants his daughter’s ‘horrible story’ to be told because it is ‘an absolute public outrage’ and that he’s doing ‘everything I can so that it doesn’t happen again’.

A jury heard over the course of a seven-day trial at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, that Emily was killed by Skana as she was riding her scooter through Queen’s Park in Bolton on March 22 this year.

Emily was calling out for her mum who was jogging when the defendant sprang from a bench, grabbed her, and sliced her across the neck with a craft knife she had bought that morning.

The prosecution told the jury of a conversation between Skana, originally from Albania, and a nurse while she was being treated at Rampton Hospital. They said it pointed to the attack being planned and therefore a calculated killing rather than manslaughter.

Skana told the nurse: ‘It was premeditated, I waited in a park and picked my victim, I did what I did then tried to run away.’

But the court was also told the conversation took place at a time when Skana was not taking her anti-psychotic medication as part of a change in treatment at the hospital.

In 2017, Skana started having monthly injections of anti-psychotic drugs but after telling medics they caused her mental health to deteriorate, she began taking them in tablet form.

Earlier that year she had attempted to stab her mother and attacked her sister in a separate incident, the jury were told. She had been admitted to psychiatric hospitals three times.

But from mid-December 2019 until March 11, Skana had no face-to-face correspondence with mental health workers, the jury heard.

When police raided her flat in Bolton, they found around a month’s worth of anti-psychotic medication.

Dr Syed Afghan, the Skana’s consultant at Rampton, told the trial that Skana was violent while under psychosis and not taking her medication.

Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust chief executive, Neil Thwaite, told the MOS: ‘We recognise the devastating impact Emily’s death has had on everyone who knew and loved her, and offer our heartfelt condolences to Emily’s parents and family. We treat incidents of this kind with the utmost seriousness and completed an internal rigorous review.’ 

Following evidence given during the trial, the prosecution told the court there was no realistic prospect of a conviction on the murder charge and withdrew it.

Trial judge Mr Justice Wall will sentence Skana for manslaughter on Tuesday.

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