POLICE SERGEANT’S 𝑲𝑰-𝑳-𝑳𝑬𝑹 LOSES APPEAL — A HORRIFYING SENTENCE AWAITS
The Court of Appeal has rejected Louis De Zoysa’s bids to challenge both his murder conviction and the whole-life order imposed for the killing of Metropolitan Police Sergeant Matt Ratana. In a ruling delivered in May 2025, Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Mr Justice Goss and Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, refused leave to appeal, confirming that De Zoysa will remain in prison for the rest of his life. The decision ends a legal challenge that had sought to overturn the jury’s finding of murder and the sentencing judge’s conclusion that the offence was of exceptionally high seriousness.
Sergeant Matiu “Matt” Ratana, 54, was fatally shot on 25 September 2020 inside a holding cell at Croydon Custody Centre in south London. He was three months from retirement. De Zoysa, then 23, had been arrested earlier that morning in Norbury after officers found him in possession of cannabis and ammunition. He was handcuffed and searched, yet a loaded antique Colt revolver remained undetected in an underarm holster concealed beneath his clothing on his left side. The gun, purchased online, was loaded with six rounds of ammunition that De Zoysa had manufactured himself. Officers recovered seven additional rounds from a pouch in his pocket but did not locate the weapon.
CCTV and body-worn video footage later established what happened next. During the journey to the custody centre in a police van, and while still handcuffed with his hands behind his back, De Zoysa used his unusual joint flexibility—described in court as hypermobility—to reach under his arm, remove the revolver from its holster, and conceal it in his hands beneath the rear vent of his overcoat. When he was taken into a holding cell and instructed by Sergeant Ratana to stand for a further search, De Zoysa twisted his body, brought the weapon forward, and fired at close range. The first shot struck the sergeant in the chest; a second hit his leg. A third bullet struck the wall of the cell. In the ensuing struggle, De Zoysa sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the neck that caused lasting brain damage. Sergeant Ratana died in hospital.
At his trial at Northampton Crown Court in 2023, De Zoysa was found guilty of murder. The jury rejected his defence of diminished responsibility based on autism spectrum disorder. Sentencing him in July 2023, Mr Justice Johnson described the killing as deliberate and carried out in cold blood. He stated that De Zoysa had acted with intent to kill and that autism did not explain or excuse the decision. Because the victim was a police officer killed in the course of duty and the offence occurred after the relevant statutory date, the judge imposed a whole-life order under Schedule 21 of the Sentencing Act 2020. De Zoysa was told he would die in prison.
De Zoysa’s legal team later sought leave to appeal both the conviction and the sentence. They argued that he had been wrongly assessed as fit to plead and stand trial, and that a whole-life order was not justified given his age, background, autism diagnosis, and the injuries he sustained. At the hearing before the Court of Appeal, counsel for De Zoysa submitted that the case did not fall into the category of the most serious murders warranting a whole-life term. The court disagreed. Dame Victoria Sharp announced that all applications were refused, with written reasons to follow. The full judgment, published later, confirmed that the sentencing judge had correctly identified the starting point of a whole-life order for the murder of a police officer on duty and had properly assessed the seriousness of the offence as exceptionally high. The court found no arguable error in either the conviction or the sentence.
The case also exposed significant shortcomings in the initial search. An inquest in November 2023 concluded that officers had failed to conduct a “safe, thorough and systematic” search. Despite finding ammunition, they did not discover the holstered revolver. The Independent Office for Police Conduct examined the Metropolitan Police’s handling of the stop and the subsequent custody procedures. While the Court of Appeal proceedings focused on De Zoysa’s criminal responsibility rather than operational failings, the inquest findings remain part of the wider public record of the events that night.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has previously described Sergeant Ratana as an outstanding officer who treated everyone with respect, compassion, and good humour. Colleagues and the wider policing community have emphasised that the whole-life order provides a measure of accountability, even though no sentence can restore the loss suffered by Ratana’s partner, family, and fellow officers. De Zoysa, who has brain damage from the self-inflicted wound, remains in custody under the upheld order.
The Court of Appeal’s refusal of leave brings finality to the criminal proceedings. Louis De Zoysa, who was 26 at the time of sentencing, will serve the remainder of his life in prison for the murder of Sergeant Matt Ratana. The ruling reaffirms the jury’s verdict that the shooting was a deliberate act of murder and confirms that the seriousness of killing a serving police officer inside a custody facility justified the most severe sentence available under English law. For those who knew Sergeant Ratana, the outcome closes one chapter of a case that began with a concealed firearm and ended with irreversible loss.