The highly decorated Special Forces soldier who died by suicide in a Cybertruck explosion on New Year’s Day confided to a former girlfriend who had served as an Army nurse that he faced significant pain and exhaustion that she says were key symptoms of traumatic brain injury.
Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger, 37, was a five-time recipient of the Bronze Star, including one with a V device for valor under fire.
He had an exemplary military record that spanned the globe and a baby born last year. But he struggled with the mental and physical toll of his service, which required him to kill and caused him to witness the deaths of fellow soldiers.
Livelsberger mostly bore that burden in private but recently sought treatment for depression from the Army, 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, who he began dating in 2018.
Alicia Arritt, 39, and Livelsberger met through a dating app while both were in Colorado Springs.
Arritt had served at Landstul Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest U.S. military medical facility in Europe, where many of the worst combat injuries from Iraq and Afghanistan were initially treated before being flown to the United States.
There she saw and treated traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, which troops suffered from incoming fire and roadside bombs. Serious but hard to diagnose, such injuries can have lingering effects that might take years to surface.
“I saw a lot of bad injuries. But the personality changes can happen later,” Arritt said.
“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 skulls pierced by bullets to mark lives he took in Afghanistan. He talked about exhaustion and pain, not being able to sleep and 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 dating, according to text messages she provided to The Associated Press. “It’s refreshing to have such a nice person come along.
