A GIRL will learn her fate later this month after admitting killing seven-year-old Katie Rough.

Leeds Crown Court heard the York child was smothered to death on what started out as a normal school day for her.

Graham Reeds, prosecuting, said minutes after Katie was attacked, the 15-year-old killer - now aged 16 - told police in a 999 call that she was dead.  She was standing in Alness Drive, Woodthorpe, covered in mud, had a bloodstained hand, appeared to be in shock and didn't know where she was.  In her pocket was a bloodstained Stanley knife, taken from a relative's house some days earlier, and two spare blades.

A short distance away from her down a path, Katie was lying on her back in the gathering dark without signs of life, with blood coming from a cut on her neck. She had been smothered and then cut twice. 

The 16-year-old, from York, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.  Leeds Crown Court heard she believed other people were "robots" and "not real". 

Mr Justice Soole adjourned sentence until July 20 for more information from prosecution and defence psychiatrists about her mental state and remanded her in custody. 

Opening the prosecution, Mr Reeds said Katie was last seen alive at 4.20pm on January 9 when a dog walker saw the two girls on "the square", a playing field off Alness Drive.

The older girl was lying on top of the younger.  Katie was unharmed and didn't appear to be in distress.  "Once she (the dog walker) saw they were two girls she thought they were just playing, and there was nothing about the behaviour of either of them that caused her concern," Mr Reeds said. 

The teenager made the phone call at 4.35pm.  According to a post mortem and forensic tests, she had smothered Katie with a glove, then cut her neck and body.  Local resident Peter Mills saw her making the call.

Because of her state, he thought she had been the victim of a serious attack.  While his wife took her into their home, he went in search of Katie. 

"Katie was lifeless and did not respond to him talking to her," said the barrister.  Paramedics tried to help her at the scene and resuscitate her in the ambulance taking her to hospital without success.

She was declared dead at York Hospital at 5.44pm. By then police had arrested the teenager.

Next to where Katie had been lying, police found a piece of paper with her blood on it and the teenager's handwriting.

It had pictures of killing and death involving stick men on it and had been cut up by the Stanley knife. 

At her home, she had a mutilated Simba lion and in her bedroom police found a hooded top that had been placed over a pillow and slashed, and notes, books and comics "of a violent nature".