Las Vegas: We Left A Man Behind
Highly decorated Green Beret master sergeant loaded explosives into a rented Cybertruck, then detonated it while shooting himself in the head. Why he chose Trump Hotel in Las Vegas remains unclear, because “manifesto” on his phone is conservative-friendly. Perhaps he knew that truck bed would direct explosion upward and injure or kill few people.
Note on phone states that he needed to “cleanse” his mind “of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.” Livelsberger served in the Army since 2006 and deployed twice to Afghanistan.
The facts are not yet completely available. But it seems clear that we are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with added survivor guilt and perhaps also a traumatic brain injury.
I can speak with some authority. I had mild PTSD after a fatal vehicle accident, and one of my strongest male role models was an Army master sergeant with combat decorations. But we didn’t talk about PTSD then. So I didn’t expect to have it, didn’t know I had it, and got over it as best I could without help.
Whether Master Sergeant Lee, my teacher, also had it I would bet money on. His Purple Heart was evidence. But it didn’t interfere with his teaching us the manual of arms and how to field strip an M1 Garand rifle.
We now know a lot more about PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. Whether this knowledge translates into better care is another question entirely. In the case of Master Sergeant Livelsberger sitting in the Cybertruck in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, we can confidently state that knowledge did not translate into effective care. We left a man behind.
No, we didn’t leave him bleeding out on a hill in Afghanistan. We didn’t leave him brain injured on the sand in Iraq. We left him suicidal on a street in Las Vegas. But we still left him.
