Alicia Arrit spent many years as an Army nurse working with war veterans with brain injuries. And when she began a relationship with Matthew Leavelsberger in 2018, long before he shot himself and flew a Cybertruck in Las Vegas this week, she recognized in her new lover many of the traits she saw in her patients.
A master sergeant in the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group, he was forgetting words, losing his train of thought in mid-sentence and struggling with insomnia. He suffered from headaches and depressive moods that sometimes kept him away for days. In a text exchange after they started dating, he mentioned being deployed three times in three years. She asked if he was hurt. “Just a few shocks,” he replied.
“I think he wanted to get help, but he thought if he said anything, he wouldn’t be able to do his job anymore,” she said in an interview Friday from her home in Colorado Springs. They dated for two years and then remained friends.
By the time they met, Sergeant Leavelsberger had been in the Army for over a decade and had been deployed to combat several times. He had spent years jumping out of airplanes and experiencing weapon blasts during training. He had suffered back injuries due to a hard parachute landing and had also lost his hearing due to explosions and firing.
The military has in recent years begun to recognize that routine operations can, over time, cause brain injuries, and Congress passed legislation requiring the military to better track blast exposure and provide treatment. Have done. But in combat units, many soldiers still do not report injuries for fear of being marginalized.
Despite his troubles, Ms. Erritt said, Sergeant Leavelsberger was also kind, funny and intelligent. She enjoyed hiking, camping, and playing with her dogs. They said there was nothing in his conversations or his actions that suggested he was inclined to commit a violent act like the one on Wednesday, when, according to police, he detonated explosives in front of the Trump International Hotel.
“He was a very loving boy, with deep integrity,” she said.
At a press conference on Friday, the head of the FBI’s Las Vegas field office said that Sergeant Leavelsbarger, who was 37, was a “heavily decorated combat veteran who struggled with PTSD and other issues.”
Investigators are still gathering and examining records, and have not provided any specific information about diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health or neurological conditions.
According to Ms. Erritt, Sergeant Livelsberger had symptoms of a traumatic brain injury, but he had not received a diagnosis from the Army. His symptoms have been getting worse over the years, he said.
Repeated blows to the head and exposure to blasts can cause damage that can go almost unnoticed over time, says Dr. Michael Jaffee, a retired Air Force colonel and a neurologist who works with the Army’s Defense and Was director of the Veterans Brain Injury Center and now runs a similar center, said. Center at the University of Florida. Neurologists now measure the risk of developing brain injury, including the progressive disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, not in terms of the number of consecutive concussions, but in terms of time spent engaged in high-risk activities.
“The more years at risk, the greater the risk,” Dr. Jaffee said. One of the high-risk activities officially listed by the National Institutes of Health is “military service,” he said.
It is impossible to definitively diagnose in living patients the type of progressive brain injury that can result from repeated, low-level exposure; Its diagnosis can only be made during an autopsy. Because of this, Dr. Jaffee said, the problem is routinely misdiagnosed or ignored altogether. “There’s a reason it’s called the invisible injury. It’s not always clear.”
The Las Vegas medical examiner’s office did not respond to a request from The New York Times asking whether it planned to examine Sergeant Livelsberger’s brain.
Ms Erritt said she did not believe Sergeant was ever formally diagnosed with a brain injury. Nevertheless, someone like Sergeant Livelsberger, who had nearly 20 years of experience in special operations and a history of contact sports, would have been at high risk.
In an interview, Dr. Jaffee listed symptoms associated with CTE, many of which were similar to what Ms. Aritt said she had seen in Sergeant Livelsberger.
In some cases, the symptoms of a brain injury may be stable, Dr. Jaffee said. In others, he said, “the disease is degenerative—has a downward progressive course.”
Some service members who are at higher risk often compensate for years and then suddenly separate, often around age 40. Some people begin to display bizarre behavior, including paranoia and delusions. This has happened to Navy SEALs at the end of their careers, with elite boat crews as they reach senior rank after years of wave-crashing missions and to TOPGUN fighter pilots repeatedly exposed to high g-forces. Have to come.
Robert R. Roberts, an Army reservist who killed 18 people and himself in Maine in 2023 A small number, including Card II, have become violent. The autopsy found that Mr Card had extensive brain damage caused by the explosion. The Army investigation found no link between Mr Card’s mental health problems and the years he spent working as a grenade instructor, repeatedly exposed to explosions on practice ranges.
“We can never say that repeated head trauma will cause someone to do something violent,” said Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, chief of the brain injury rehabilitation division at Massachusetts General Hospital. “But we can say that repeated head injuries make you more likely to make very bad decisions.”
He said he has treated several career Special Operations veterans for brain injuries. Most of them improve with treatment, he said, but some struggle with worsening symptoms, and some develop mania, paranoid delusions or other types of psychosis.
After Sergeant Leavelsberger met Ms. Aritt in 2018, he remained in uniform for six more years and continued training and deployments. He was promoted to a team leader, got married, and had a child. But, Ms. Aritt said, her life became a struggle.
Sleeplessness and depressed mood persisted and his performance began to deteriorate. In 2021, the Army sent him to its Advanced Special Operations Techniques course near Seattle, but, Ms. Arritt said, he failed.
“He couldn’t concentrate – it was very frustrating for him,” she said, attributing it to traumatic brain injuries.
After the course, he said, he became paranoid and believed he was being followed. He had nightmares that continued long after the course was over.
He considered taking a less demanding assistant job in the Special Forces, but after some consideration opted to take a leadership job at an American base in Germany.
“He knew he was having problems then, and he thought it was related to the brain injuries, but he also knew that if he said anything, they wouldn’t let him go,” Ms Erritt said.
The two friends lost touch when he moved to Germany in 2022.
Sergeant Leavelsberger sent Ms. Aritt a message this week after years of silence, during which the sergeant got married and had a child, to say he was back in Colorado and had rented a Tesla. Had taken. While they made small talk about their relationship as they drove to Las Vegas, he gave no indication, she said, that he was planning an attack.
“But there was something strange about him,” she said. “That didn’t seem right.”
In notes left on his phone released Friday by Las Vegas police, he said he wanted to make a scene. “Now why did I personally do this?” He has written. “I needed to clear my mind about the brothers I’ve lost and get rid of the burden on my life.”
jesse fortin Contributed to the reporting.