The man who blew himself up on the first day of the year inside a Tesla car in Las Vegas left a note saying that the attack served to alert people to the country’s evils. The decorated United States Special Forces soldier who died by suicide in a car explosion on New Year’s Day confided in a former girlfriend – who had served as an Army nurse – that he suffered from significant pain and exhaustion that would be the main symptoms of a traumatic brain injury.
According to the Associated Press (AP), Livelsberger was very reserved, but shared images and texts with Alicia Arritt, 39, who he met and started dating in Colorado in 2018. In these texts, he spoke of exhaustion, of pain that kept him awake overnight and to relive the violence of his deployment in Afghanistan. “My life has been a personal hell for the last year,” he told Arritt in the early days of their relationship, according to text messages she provided to the AP.
Arritt also served on active duty in the Army as a nurse from 2003 to 2007, having been deployed to the military medical complex in Germany, where she helped treat many soldiers with traumatic brain injuries and blast injuries resulting from ground combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Alicia Arritt said the military was unable to give Livelsberger the care he needed, symptoms she identified as early as 2018. “He would go through periods where he would retire and struggle with depression and memory loss,” Arritt said. “He said it was a blast injury. He had several concussions because of it.”
Livelsberger was also dealing with post-traumatic stress and reliving some of the violence and murders he participated in or witnessed in Afghanistan. “I would encourage him to go to therapy and he would give me reasons not to,” Arritt said. “There was a big stigma in their unit, they were, you know, big, strong, Special Forces types, they didn’t allow weaknesses and they saw mental health as a weakness.”
Livelsberger served in the Green Berets, highly trained special forces that work to combat terrorism abroad and train partners from other countries, the US Army said in a statement. This soldier has served in the Army since 2006, rising through the ranks with a long career in missions abroad, deploying twice in Afghanistan and serving in Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia and Congo, according to the same source.
He received two Bronze Stars, including one for valor, for courage under fire, a Combat Infantry Badge, and an Army Commendation Medal for valor. Livelsberger was on approved leave when he died, according to the military.
The incident occurred hours after Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, 42, ran into a crowd in New Orleans’ famous French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 15 people before being shot dead by police. This incident is being investigated as a terrorist attack.
Seven people nearby suffered minor injuries when the Tesla truck exploded. The Cybertruck was rented in Colorado through the Turo platform (a private rental system similar to the local accommodation platform Airbnb), just like the van used in the New Orleans collision, which occurred on New Year’s Eve, the company confirmed in a statement.
Source: expresso.pt
