Washington — The highly decorated Special Forces soldier who committed suicide in a Cybertruck explosion on New Year’s Day told a former girlfriend who had worked as an Army nurse that he experienced significant pain and exhaustion, which she described as key symptoms of traumatic brain injury.
Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger, 37, was awarded the Bronze Star five times, including one with a V device for valor under fire. He had an exemplary military record that stretched across the globe, as well as a new baby born last year.
However, he struggled with the mental and physical toll of his service, which required him to kill and forced him to witness the deaths of other soldiers.
Livelsberger mostly bore that burden in private, but recently sought Army treatment for depression, according to a US official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide information that has not been made public.
He also found a confidant in the ex-nurse, whom he started dating in 2018.
Alicia Arritt, 39, and Livelsberger met on a dating app while they were 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 most serious combat injuries from Iraq and Afghanistan were treated before being flown to the United States.
She saw and treated troops who had suffered traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, as a result of incoming fire and roadside bombs. Serious but difficult to diagnose, such injuries can have long-term consequences that may not become apparent for years.
“I witnessed a lot of severe injuries. However, personality changes can occur later,” Arritt explained.
Livelsberger provided Arritt with texts and images that shed some light on his situation.
“Just some concussions,” he wrote in a text about his deployment to Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He sent her a photo of a graphic tattoo he got on his arm depicting two skulls pierced by bullets to commemorate the lives he took in Afghanistan. He discussed exhaustion and pain, being unable to sleep, and reliving the violence of his deployment.
“My life has been a personal hell for the last year,” he told Arritt in the early stages of their relationship, according to text messages she provided to the AP. “It’s refreshing to have such a nice person come along.”
On Friday, Las Vegas law enforcement officers released excerpts from messages Livelsberger left behind, indicating that Livelsberger committed suicide on purpose, both as a “wakeup call” and to “cleanse the demons” he was facing as a result of losing fellow soldiers and taking lives.
The death of Livelsberger in front of the Trump Hotel, which was carried out with a truck manufactured by Elon Musk’s Tesla company, has sparked speculation that it was an act of political violence.
Officials said Friday that Livelsberger appeared to have no ill will toward President-elect Donald Trump, and Arritt stated that both she and Livelsberger were Tesla fans.
“I had a Tesla too that I rescued from a junkyard in 2019, and we used to work on it together, bond over it,” Arritt recalled.”
After their breakup in 2021, they stopped talking on a regular basis, and she hadn’t heard from him in more than two years when he texted her unexpectedly on December 28 and 31.
The upbeat messages included a video of him driving the Cybertruck and another of its dancing headlights; the vehicle’s lighting and music can be synced together.
However, she also stated that Livelsberger felt things “very deeply, and I could see him using symbolism” with both the truck and the hotel.
“He wasn’t impulsive,” Arritt explained. “I don’t see him doing this impulsively, so my suspicion would be that he was probably thinking it out.”
Arritt served active duty from 2003 to 2007, and then in the Army Reserve until 2011. Livelsberger noticed symptoms of TBI as early as 2018.
“He would go through periods of withdrawal, and he struggled with depression and memory loss,” Arritt told me.
“I don’t know what drove him to do this, but I think the military didn’t get him help when he needed it.”
But Livelsberger was also sweet and kind, she said. “He had a really deep well of inner strength and character, and he just had a lot of integrity.”
Sabrina Singh, Pentagon deputy press secretary, told reporters Friday that all of Livelsberger’s medical records had been turned over to local law enforcement, and that troops dealing with mental health issues should seek help through one of the military’s support networks.
“If you need help, if you feel that you need to seek any type of mental health treatment, or just to talk to someone — to seek the services that are available, either on base or off,” Singh told reporters.
When Livelsberger struggled while they were dating, Arritt encouraged him to seek help. But he refused, saying it could jeopardize his ability to deploy if he was found medically unfit.
“There was a lot of stigma in his unit, they were, you know, big, strong, Special Forces guys there, there was no weakness allowed and mental health is weakness is what they saw,” she told me.
CNN first reported that Livelsberger was seeking treatment for depression.
Rio Yamat, an Associated Press writer in Las Vegas, contributed.
