Woman was calm after killing Emily, 7, in park
By Joanne Rowe JoanneRoweBN Chief Reporter
Emily Jones and Queens Park
A PSYCHIATRIST has revealed how Eltiona Skana told her "nothing is going on in my head, I'm just fine" hours after she stabbed seven-year-old Emily Jones to death in Queens Park in Bolton.
Dr Suhanthini Farrell was called in to assess Skana, 30, following her arrest on March 22 and told a jury at Minshull Street Crown Court that the defendant said she knew she was a paranoid schizophrenic but denied hearing voices.
Throughout the assessment Skana appeared calm and emotionless but Dr Farrell added that she was "guarded and suspicious in her manner, and very little rapport was established".
Dr Farrell described the defendant as "clean, well kempt," who maintained fixed, staring eye contact with a "tone of hostility and increasing irritability".
Dr Farrell said: "It did feel she was thinking carefully about the answers she was giving, rather than responding intuitively, naturally.
"She was composing her answers, then giving it.
"My impression was there was active psychotic symptoms. The symptoms were subtle.
"Objectively she did appear to be paranoid."
Skana told doctors that she had been treated with injections of anti-psychotic medication but had changed it to oral medication.
But Skana's sister later told Dr Victoria Sullivan at the Edenfield medium secure unit in Prestwich, where she was transferred, that she had only been taking the drugs intermittently.
Dr Sullivan said Skana's sister, Klestora, turned up at the unit, "distressed".
The witness said: "She told us Miss Skana had been missing days in her medication.
"She had had mental health difficulties for a number of years, she intermittently did not take her medication and had been a risk to other people."
While on the unit Skana was observed "muttering" to herself and turning her head abruptly as if to respond to visual stimuli.
She also claimed sometimes to see "angels" which communicated to her through gesticulations.
Dr Sullivan said: "I suspected she had either not been taking medication in the community or it had for some reason stopped working."
The court has heard Skana, originally from Albania, came to the UK in 2014 and had been having injections of anti-psychotic drugs each month since 2017.
Skana also told medics this medication had caused her mental health to deteriorate and in mid-2019 she swapped to a different anti-psychotic medication, taken orally, which she said made her less paranoid.
The defendant lived in a flat in Bolton, while her mother, two sisters and a brother lived nearby in Manchester, though she had no job, no friends and spent her time having coffee with her mother.
The court heard that Skana revealed she had being seeing visions of people and angels, which frightened her but did not speak.
But on the day of Emily's death, the sister said Skana appeared ordinary and had gone out for a walk but did not return.
Instead, she went to a shop and bought a craft knife which she used to slit Emily's throat.
In the park that afternoon was Tony Canty and his family, and the jury was played a recording of his police interview.
He told how he had seen a woman manhandling a child and thought the woman had assaulted the girl leaving her with a bloody nose.
Mr Canty, followed the woman, knocked her to the ground and sat on her until police arrived.
Skana, of Ernest Street, Bolton, admits manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility but denies murder.
The trial continues.