Man accused of shooting Met officer Matt Ratana while handcuffed tells court he's hypermobile

A man accused of shooting dead Met Police Sgt Matt Ratana while handcuffed at a custody block in Croydon told a court he has hypermobility.

Louis De Zoysa, 25, who denies the murder of the 54-year-old custody sergeant answered “I don’t know” to a series of questions about whether he was moving the gun into his hand while in the back of a police van following his arrest.

Hypermobility means that some or all of a person's joints have an unusually large range of movement. De Zoysa said he was hypermobile when asked whether he was reaching to take the gun out of a holster in the back of a police van. He said he was "stretching".

Jocelyn Ledward, prosecuting, asked De Zoysa if he was “moving the gun out of the holster” while in the police van travelling to the custody block.

He replied “I don’t know”, before adding “hypermobility”.

The prosecutor asked him: “You have hypermobility?”

“Yes,” said De Zoysa, of Banstead, Surrey.

The defendant, who was shown CCTV footage of himself in the police van, was asked what he was doing in the clip of him sat in the moving vehicle.

“No seatbelts, moving around,” he said.

Asked if he was “looking down at the gun”, he replied: “No, stretching.”

Officers did not know he had a gun until it was used to shoot Sgt Ratana.

The prosecution alleges De Zoysa “pulled the trigger on purpose four times” while he was handcuffed in a holding room after arriving at the custody centre in Croydon, south London, on September 25 2020.

They say that the first and second shots hit Sgt Ratana, the third hit the wall during a struggle with officers, and a fourth hit De Zoysa himself.

Ms Ledward asked: “Were you trying to hold the gun in your hand?”

“I don’t know,” the defendant said.

Asked why his coat moved, he replied: “Fidgety.”

He said he did not know when asked if he was hiding the gun under his coat in the footage, and when asked if he put the gun in his hand so he could fire it.

De Zoysa was also shown CCTV footage from the custody block, in which Sgt Ratana tells another officer to wand De Zoysa down.

“Do you understand what wanding down is?” asked the prosecutor.

The defendant, giving evidence in a modified way at Northampton Crown Court, because of communication difficulties caused by brain damage due to a gunshot wound, replied “yes”, then wrote the word “metal” on a whiteboard.

Asked if he thought the gun was going to be found, De Zoysa said: “No because cuffs metal.”

Asked a second time, he said “no” then drew a picture of the handcuffs and gun together.

The prosecutor asked De Zoysa, in respect of the first shot fired, “did you point the gun at officer Ratana?” and he replied “yes”.

Ms Ledward asked: “Did you point the gun at his chest?”

De Zoysa answered: “Yes.”

The prosecutor asked: “When you did that did you pull the trigger?”

“Yes,” the defendant said.

Ms Ledward asked: “Did you mean to pull the trigger at that time?”

“No,” De Zoysa said.

Asked a similar set of questions in respect of the second shot fired, he agreed that he pointed the gun at Sgt Ratana, pulled the trigger but said he did not mean to do so.

The prosecutor earlier asked De Zoysa why he told arresting officers in London Road, Norbury, south London, that bullets found in a pouch with him were not real when they actually were.

“I’m panic, anxiety,” De Zoysa said.

Imran Khan KC, defending, asked if De Zoysa had wanted to kill himself with the gun that day, and he replied “no”.

Consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Dinesh Maganty was instructed as an expert witness to look at whether De Zoysa had an abnormality of mental functioning at the time.

He looked at CCTV footage, the defendant’s medical records and statements from people who knew him.

Mr Khan asked Dr Maganty: “Having assessed all of this material, is it your considered opinion that Louis De Zoysa suffered an autistic meltdown at the time of the index offence in this case?”

Dr Maganty said: “If the account given by him to me is accepted and the prosecution narrative is not, then yes.

“But if the prosecution narrative is accepted in its entirety, then no.”

Asked by Mr Khan if somebody being “overwhelmed by autistic meltdown” was “not in control of their actions”, Dr Maganty said “you can’t be in control if you’re completely overwhelmed”.

He said factors leading to an autistic meltdown were “different neurobiology” and “stress”.

But Dr Maganty said that “if, as the prosecution case is, he brought the gun out, he was planning it, he intended to do it, that’s entirely not consistent with an autistic meltdown”.

The trial continues.

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