Was he on the way to kill his abusive father?
WHEN Louis De Zoysa set off at midnight with a loaded gun strapped under his arm and a bag of bullets, he appeared to be on a mission.
His plans on that fateful night in 2020 have never been established because the then 23-year-old told no one beforehand and, now brain-damaged through a self-inflicted gun wound, he is no longer able to share that secret.
But shortly after he was charged with murder, prosecutors provided their theory of why he was walking towards his parents’ home with a lethal weapon.
After years of brutal abuse at the hands of his father, could it be that the autistic loner planned to kill him?
Prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward told the Old Bailey: ‘His motives for carrying the firearm and discharging it at Sergeant Matt Ratana remain somewhat unclear.
‘One factor aside from his interest in firearms, ammunition and extreme violence is a past history of volatile relations between the defendant and his father and other members of the family.
‘He was no longer living at the family
‘A past history of volatile relations’
address. The place where he was stopped was relatively close to that address.’
The horrifying conclusion that De Zoysa may have been planning an attack on his family home will shock many in their local community who may have assumed he had an idyllic upbringing.
His parents regularly appeared in the local newspaper, where his father, Sri Lanka-born Channa, and mother Elizabeth, both 58, were portrayed as Catholic churchgoers, keen members of the community, and enthusiastic cyclists.
De Zoysa’s electronics engineerturned-yoga teacher father kept bees, and played badminton. A trustee of the Sri Lankan Christian Association, the father of five was known as ‘Dr Bike’ for his free bicycle repair clinics. Elizabeth, a Dutch-English translator, won 550 votes as a Green candidate in Croydon’s 2010 council elections.
Outwardly they appeared an accomplished family, but behind the front door of the threebedroom home in Norbury, south London, the reality was very different.
At Northampton Crown Court, De Zoysa, now 25, painted a disturbing picture of his father, describing him as a ‘criminal’ and former ‘drug dealer’ hooked on cocaine for a decade.
Throughout much of the trial, the defendant’s answers were confined to one word and he relied on a white board to communicate. But when asked about his father, De Zoysa suddenly became animated, talking about how he had been beaten for ‘trivial’ things.
De Zoysa described ‘crazy violence’ at the dinner table, drawing a picture of a child trying to protect himself from his father, whom he accused of once pulling a knife on a family member.
He said his father threw a piece of wood at him, striking him on the face. Another time, Mr De Zoysa was arrested for assault after hitting his son so hard with a wooden slat he broke his foot.
Social workers attended the home for a decade to monitor the children’s safety and Elizabeth took out a restraining order against her husband, cutting him off financially before they reconciled. As he grew older, De Zoysa hit back. He admitted battering his father with a metal rod and setting fire to a bedroom carpet. Asked how he felt about the violence, De Zoysa’s reply was chilling: ‘Brewing.’
Mr De Zoysa was not in court to hear the allegations of violence, which were presented to jurors as ‘agreed facts’. He did not respond to requests for comment.
Aside from the violence at home, De Zoysa was bullied at school.
Known as an un-sporty ‘very clever maths geek’, he achieved straight As at A-level at the John Fisher secondary in Purley, south
London. But De Zoysa, who was diagnosed with autism aged 13, struggled to make friends.
Pupils recall an interest in armoury that led to him being disciplined for bringing an air gun to school. De Zoysa also boasted of surfing the ‘dark web’.
One friend, who recalled De Zoysa designing weapons on school computers, said: ‘He used to brag about how he could see hitmen and guns for sale, and used to watch murder videos... Isis videos and things like that.’
When he progressed to studying mechanical engineering at University College London, De Zoysa was pictured smiling as he brandished a medieval broadsword in 2017.
Two years before the murder, De Zoysa was referred to the Home Office’s ‘Prevent’ de-radicalisation
Left, De Zoysa with sword. Above, he pulls out a gun (circled). Top, Sgt Ratana and his partner Su Bushby programme over fears he ‘had extreme Islamist and Rightwing views’. But he was assessed as ‘posing no threat’.
He dropped out of university but worked as a data analyst at HM Revenue and Customs in Croydon, where colleagues praised his ability to write computer code from scratch.
But behind the scenes, De Zoysa was smoking increasing amounts of cannabis. Seeking solitude, he left the family home to live eight miles away on a farm in Banstead, Surrey. There, he bought an antique revolver in an online auction. He didn’t need a gun licence because the firearm was considered obsolete, with bullets no longer available.
But De Zoysa set about buying primers, casings and lead balls to make bullets for the weapon, which he test fired at the farm.
Whatever his intentions on the night of his arrest, his parents told fringe online magazine The Upsetter police had ‘failed’ their son. A resulting article suggested police blunders were to blame for Sgt Ratana’s death, and that the officer’s family could be due compensation from the force – rather than from De Zoysa.
‘He used to watch murder videos’