Editor’s Note: Help is available if you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters. In the US: Call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Globally: The International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide have contact information for crisis centers around the world.
CNN
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The active-duty US Army Green Beret who authorities say exploded a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas this week struggled with injuries relating to his military service and said he was depressed while they were together a few years ago, an ex-girlfriend of his told CNN.
The soldier, Matthew Alan Livelsberger, who authorities said fatally shot himself shortly before the truck exploded, texted her in late December after more than two years of silence between the two, but she had no impression he was planning anything like Wednesday’s incident, she said.
Alicia Arritt dated Livelsberger from 2018 to 2019 and from 2020 to about 2022 after they met through a dating app while both were living in Colorado, she told CNN on Saturday. She had been an Army nurse, The Associated Press reported.
Livelsberger suffered concussions, but it’s not clear how many, Arritt told CNN. Arritt, who said she had worked at a traumatic brain injury unit at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in 2008 and 2009, was not involved in his treatment.
He also had back surgeries in 2018 and 2019 relating to injuries he suffered during his military service, she said.
“He just says he landed bad (after parachuting) too many times. It was … cumulative,” she told CNN.
While they dated, he also said he was depressed, she told CNN.
“He would tell me he had depression. Like, ‘We can’t hang out today; I’m too depressed today,’” Arritt told CNN. “He had a lot of inner strength, and he would just push through it.”
US officials familiar with Livelsberger’s military records told CNN he had been diagnosed with depression last year but had not been assessed to be a risk of violence or suicide.
He spoke of injuries, pain and exhaustion in texts to Arritt while they were dating, the AP reported. “Just some concussions,” he said in a text about a deployment in Afghanistan, according to the AP.
“My life has been a personal hell for the last year,” he said in a text to her not long after they started dating, the AP reported, citing messages she provided to the news organization. “It’s refreshing to have such a nice person come along.”
She stopped hearing from him in July 2022, but he texted her on December 28 and they exchanged messages between then and December 31.
He texted about the Cybertruck authorities say he rented, Arritt told CNN.
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“We had worked on my Tesla together back in 2019, so it was kind of … he thought I would be excited about the Tesla,” she told CNN.
“I had no idea (he was planning anything), and I have so much guilt because I feel like I could have done something,” Arritt told CNN.
“All he wanted to do was be there for his teammates,” she told CNN about his military service. “He wanted to help them and protect them and be the first one to rush into battle to help his teammates.”
Livelsberger, 37, of Colorado, was on leave from his base in Germany at the time of Wednesday’s blast, sources told CNN. The explosion was caused by a combination of fireworks, gas tanks and camping fuel in the bed of the vehicle detonated by a device controlled by the driver. Seven other people were injured in the blast, officials said.
Spencer Evans, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas Division, said Friday the incident appeared to be “a tragic case of suicide involving a heavily decorated combat veteran who was struggling with PTSD and other issues.”
Evans said “other family issues or personal grievances in his own life … may have been contributing factors” in the man’s actions in Las Vegas.
Livelsberger wrote of “political grievances,” armed conflicts elsewhere and domestic issues in the days leading up to his suicide, officials said Friday, citing two letters they saw they found on a cell phone in the truck. In one letter, the driver of the Cybertruck said the incident was intended not as a “terrorist attack” but rather “a wake-up call,” according to police. He wrote in the letter recovered by investigators that “Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence” and “fireworks and explosives” were best to get his point across.
