WASHINGTON (AP) — The highly decorated Special Forces soldier who died by suicide in a Cybertruck explosion on New Year’s Day, he confided to an ex-girlfriend who had served as an Army nurse that he was facing significant pain and exhaustion that she said were key symptoms of a traumatic brain injury.
Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger, 37, received the Bronze Star five times, including once with a V-device for valor under fire. He had an exemplary military record that spanned the world and a new baby was born last year. But he struggled with the physical and mental toll of his service, which required him to kill and caused him to witness the deaths of his fellow soldiers.
Livelsberger mostly bore that burden in private, but recently sought treatment for depression in the military, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that have not been made public.
He also found a confidant in the former nurse, whom he began dating in 2018.
Alicia Arritt, 39, and Livelsberger met through a dating app while they were both in Colorado Springs. Arritt had worked at Landstul Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest US military medical facility in Europe, where many of the worst combat wounds from Iraq and Afghanistan were initially treated before being flown to the US.
There he saw and treated traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, that troops suffered from incoming fire and roadside bombs. These injuries, serious but difficult to diagnose, can have lingering effects that can take years to appear.
“I saw a lot of serious injuries. But personality changes can happen later,” Arritt said.
In texts and images he shared with Arritt, Livelsberger lifted the curtain a bit on what he was facing.
“Just some concussions,” he said in a text about a deployment to Helmand province in Afghanistan. He sent her a photo of a graphic tattoo he got on his arm of two bullet-ridden skulls to mark the lives he took in Afghanistan. He spoke of fatigue and pain, of not being able to sleep and of reliving the violence of his deployment.
“My life has been a personal hell for the last year,” he told Arritt during the early days of their relationship, according to text messages she provided to the AP. “It’s comforting to have such a nice person.”
On Friday, Las Vegas law enforcement officials released excerpts from messages Livelsberger left showing that the way Livelsberger committed suicide was intentional, intended as a “wake-up call” but also to “cleanse the demons” he faced in losing his fellow soldiers and take lives.
Livelsberger’s death outside the Trump Hotel using a truck produced by Elon Musk’s Tesla company has raised questions about whether it was an act of political violence.
Officials said Friday that Livelsberger apparently harbored no ill will toward President-elect Donald Trump, and Arritt said both she and Livelsberger were Tesla fans.
“I also had a Tesla that I rescued from a junkyard in 2019, and we used to work on it together, bonding over it,” Arritt said.
The couple stopped talking regularly after they split in 2021, and she hadn’t heard from him in over two years when he texted her out of the blue on December 28 and again on December 31. The upbeat messages included a video of him driving. the Cybertruck and another of its dancing headlights; The vehicle can synchronize its lighting and music.
But he also said Livelsberger felt things “very deeply and I could see him using the symbolism” of both the truck and the hotel.
“He wasn’t impulsive,” Arritt said. “I don’t see him doing this impulsively, so I suspect he was probably thinking about it.”
Arritt served on active duty from 2003 to 2007 and then was in the Army Reserve until 2011. Under Livelsberger he saw symptoms of TBI as early as 2018.
“I was going through periods of withdrawal and struggling with depression and memory loss,” Arritt said.
“I don’t know what prompted him to do this, but I think the military didn’t give him help when he needed it.”
But Livelsberger was also sweet and kind, he recalled: “She had a very deep inner strength and character, and she had a lot of integrity.”
Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Friday that she turned over all of Livelsberger’s medical records to local authorities and encouraged troops facing mental health issues to seek care through one of the networks. army support.
“If you need help, if you feel like you need to seek some type of mental health treatment, or just talk to someone, look for the services that are available, whether on or off base,” Singh said.
When Livelsberger had problems during their time dating, Arritt urged him to get help. But he didn’t, saying it could cost him his ability to deploy if he was determined medically unfit.
“There was a lot of stigma in their unit, they were, you know, big, strong Special Forces guys there, weakness was not allowed and what they saw was that mental health is weakness,” he said.
CNN first reported that Livelsberger was seeking treatment for depression.
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Associated Press writer Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed.
Tara Copp, Associated Press