My son’s a murderer…when I found out what he did I wanted to curl up and hide

The mother of Louis De Zoysa, 26, who was convicted of murdering Met Police Sgt Matt Ratana, 54, at a station in Croydon, south London in 2020, has spoken about his entire life sentence.

Elizabeth de Zoysa spoke on the television series Mums of Murderers on best about the ’emotional weight’ she carries from what her son did.

New Zealand-born Sgt Ratana was hit by two bullets and died of his injuries in hospital despite the efforts of medical staff. He was the first cop ever killed inside a police station in the UK.

One of de Zoysa’s bullets hit him in the neck, causing a stroke and leading to brain damage.

Elizabeth spoke of her son’s autism, her shock at seeing his disabilities and how she believes he should ‘be in a secure hospital’, not a prison.

Recalling the moment she found out about her son’s crime, she said: ‘I was in absolute shock. One of the first thoughts in my head was, how can I have given birth to a child like this, and is there something in me that put him on this path?’

‘All offenders have families. When you have a child, no one says to you, you can only love your child if they go down this path. I wouldn’t have abandoned him as a baby and I wouldn’t do that now.’

When police told Elizabeth about what unfolded in the custody suite, she first questioned how he was able to get a gun into the suite.

‘I just curled over and wanted to hide.’

Elizabeth attended the trial to be a ‘representative of Louis’ and also show respect to the victim’s family.

But her son’s crime has complicated her own life, she said: ‘Some friends didn’t know how to approach me. Some blamed me…some were very supportive.

‘As a mum I’m thinking could I have done things better…you run through your mind the things you could perhaps have done better and I didn’t want to face that being said by friends.’

‘I wanted to find out who I was, whether I was going to turn into this hard-bitten person who was getting angry with other people about how this had happened,’ she added.

‘Obviously, I’ve changed in some ways but the essence of who I am is still there.’

During his sentencing, the judge told De Zoysa: ‘The events are clear on CCTV and body-worn video evidence. You knew the gun worked, you knew that each cartridge was likely to kill if fired directly at a person’s chest.

‘You deliberately concealed the gun from the police. You told them you had cannabis to focus their attention on that.

‘You made strenuous and successful efforts to retrieve the gun while you were handcuffed behind your back.’

De Zoysa, who is thought to have removed the gun from a holster while in a police van and then kept it hidden under the vent of his overcoat, had time and space to consider what to do, the judge said.

‘You were able to think about what you would do,’ he continued. ‘Autism is not to blame for your decision to murder Sergeant Ratana. You are to blame for that.’

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