COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KDVR) — FOX31 is getting new insight about the Colorado man suspected of blowing up a Tesla Cybertruck outside of President-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel.
A few days before New Year’s Eve, Alicia Arritt was surprised to receive text messages from her ex-boyfriend, Matthew Livelsberger.
“He was just being funny and silly, and I didn’t recognize it for a call for help,” Arritt said. “He’s sent a video of him dancing in the car and then the Cybertruck’s headlights. I had no idea.”
Police believe Livelsberger, a 37-year-old active-duty army soldier from Colorado Springs, was at the center of an explosion in front of Trump’s hotel. Investigators believe Livelsberger killed himself before the blast injured seven others.
“I met Matt in 2018,” Arritt said. “We met on a dating app in Colorado Springs. He had just come back from deployment to Afghanistan, and we dated on and off for about two years.”
Arritt shared text messages dating back to when she and Livelsberger started dating.
A photo of Matthew Livelsberger and Alicia Arritt (Courtesy Alicia Arritt)
“In some of the early text messages between us, he was talking about the head injuries he’d had,” she said. “He had a lot of headaches, a lot of pain and exhaustion. He just powered through. But he’d had several blasts that he was involved in that he didn’t get a leg blown off, but it pounded his brain.”
Arritt said Livelsberger told her about mental health struggles multiple times over the course of their relationship and after as they remained friends.
“For 18 years, he carried that weight alone,” she said. “He told me there is help available, but if he sought help, he’d be marked non-deployable. And there was a lot of shame associated with it in his unit. He wanted to be there for his teammates.”
Hearing about the explosion and his death, Arritt said she was shocked.
“I have been absolutely heartbroken,” she said. “It’s not the man I knew back then. I don’t know what happened to him. He was one of the most loving and generous people I ever met.”
Police released a note that they believe Livelsberger wrote.
“This was not a terrorist attack. It was a wake-up call,” the note stated.
“I don’t know all of what he was thinking, but I think two things can be true,” Arritt said. “I think it could be true that he had invisible injuries, that a lot of veterans struggle with the anguish of war for 18 years of going on missions. And I think he could have some legitimate concerns about international concerns. He probably had a lot more information than most of us do.”
As for the location of the Trump hotel, Arritt told FOX31 she does not know the significance specifically, but she said Livelsberger was very “intentional and careful in everything he did.”
