Thirteen Years of Warning Signs: Iraq War Veterans and America’s Mental Health Crisis
On September 28, 2025, Thomas Jacob Sanford drove his pickup truck through the front doors of a Mormon church in Grand Blanc, Michigan. He opened fire on hundreds of Sunday worshippers with an assault rifle, planted improvised explosive devices, then doused the building with gasoline and burned it to the ground. Four people died. Eight were wounded.
The day before, Nigel Edge approached a North Carolina waterfront bar by boat and opened fire with a suppressed AR-style rifle. Three dead. Eight wounded.
Both men were 40 years old. Both were Marines who served in Iraq during the mid-2000s surge and sectarian violence.
This should not be treated as a coincidence, given a thirteen-year pattern anyone can plainly see.
A Pattern Demanding Somebody Care
Since 2012, at least nine Iraq War veterans have committed mass shootings in the United States, killing 24 people and wounding dozens more. The locations vary—churches, bars, airports, military bases—but the warning signs remain hauntingly consistent:
Benjamin Barnes (2012): Sent “I want to die” texts before killing a park ranger. Ex-girlfriend had documented his PTSD, weapons arsenal, and suicide threats in custody court papers. No intervention came.
Ivan Lopez (2014): Being evaluated for PTSD at Fort Hood when he killed three soldiers after an argument over leave paperwork. He was taking Ambien and antidepressants. His mother had died five months earlier. He had $14,000 in debt.
Esteban Santiago (2017): Walked into an FBI office claiming the CIA was controlling his mind, was held for psychiatric evaluation, then released. Two months later, he killed five people at Fort Lauderdale airport. His family had begged for help.
Bryan Riley (2021): Under the influence of methamphetamine and divine delusions, he murdered a family of four including a 3-month-old baby. His girlfriend knew he had PTSD. He believed God told him to save someone who didn’t exist.
Matthew Livelsberger (2025): Detonated a truck bomb outside a Trump building in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day to “relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took”. He had PTSD, depression, and multiple traumatic brain injuries. He was in the Army’s mental health program. He’d had three counseling sessions in the five months before his attack—then stopped seeking help because of Special Forces stigma.
Michael Brown (2025): Killed four people in a Montana bar next door to where he lived. His family had warned authorities a “snap could happen.” The VA allegedly told him he “no longer qualified for assistance.” Montana State Hospital refused admission unless court-ordered. He refused his schizophrenia medications.
And now Sanford and Edge, within 24 hours of each other.
Ideology Serves as a Distraction
The early reporting tried to frame Sanford’s attack as anti-Mormon extremism, with the President even calling it anti-Christian. Investigators suggested “possible anti-Mormon rhetoric.” The narrative was ready: religious hatred, domestic terrorism, the usual script was rolling immediately. But that’s NOT what the evidence so far really shows. Sanford drove past several other churches on the way to target the one he had no documented connection with.
What he did have was a ten-year-old son born with a severe medical condition requiring multiple surgeries, lengthy hospitalizations, and experimental treatment. The financial strain was crushing enough that he’d started a GoFundMe in 2015. He’d taken leave from his job as a Coca-Cola truck driver just to care for his child.
Edge had sued the VA just four days before his attack, alleging they conspired to block his treatment. He’d filed multiple frivolous lawsuits fed by social media memes, claiming his parents were “LGBTQ White Supremacist Pedophiles.” His ex-wife hadn’t heard from him in a decade. He’d legally changed his name. He was drowning in documented mental health crises his family couldn’t stop.
These weren’t ideological attacks. These were men in crisis—financial, medical, psychological—who had been failed by every system meant to catch them.
An Invisible Damaged Generation
Sanford and Edge represent a specific cohort: the Iraq War veteran generation, now entering middle age.
They enlisted young, served in Fallujah, Ramadi, Baghdad during the height of urban combat and IEDs. They came home to a country that had moved on, to a VA system that was overwhelmed, to civilian jobs that didn’t exist or didn’t pay enough.
Now they’re 40. The adrenaline has worn off. The coping mechanisms that worked at 25 don’t work anymore. Marriages fail. Parents die. Kids get sick. Medical bills pile up.
And the mental health care system that was supposed to be there? It disappeared.
America’s Failed Basic Duty of Care
After sending its citizens into harm’s way, America ignored the basic mental care they required. A ProPublica investigation found that half of routine VA inspections revealed mental health care failures—botched suicide screenings, failure to follow up with at-risk veterans, wait times stretching for months. Sixteen veterans who received substandard VA care have killed themselves or others since 2020.
Over three-quarters of the VA’s 139 networks report “severe” shortages of psychiatrists and psychologists. Rural veterans—who comprise 27% of those with serious mental illness—use intensive mental health programs at rates 58% lower than urban veterans.
The pattern is clear of veterans who seek help, show warning signs, even directly alert authorities and then the system fails to accept the duty of care. FBI evaluations release dangerous individuals after days. VA offices deny help even with diagnosed schizophrenics. Families file explicit warnings only to be told nothing can be done without court orders. Mental health programs abandoned due to systemic military and cultural stigma. Every case above represents a missed intervention point for public safety and healthcare, a system-wide failure, a preventable tragedy.
Every single one showed very obvious warning signs and American “safety” experts closed their eyes. Every single one fell through gaps in the system.
When Combat Trauma Meets Middle Age
Research on Iraq War veterans reveals the kind of simple truths most Americans still don’t seem to want to recognize:
They have 3-4 times higher violence rates than the general population—but that still means 91% never engage in severe violence. The 9% who do share specific risk factors: combat exposure during the surge or sectarian violence periods, traumatic brain injury from IED blasts, PTSD or moral injury, major life stressors, social isolation, and inadequate mental health treatment.
Combat trauma doesn’t fade—it compounds. PTSD symptoms often worsen in middle age as veterans lose the energy to suppress them. The hypervigilance that kept them alive in Fallujah becomes exhausting in suburbia.
Add civilian stresses: Sanford’s son with catastrophic medical needs. Lopez’s mother dying and $14,000 in debt. Santiago with $5-10 in his bank account. Livelsberger’s wife leaving after infidelity disputes. Barnes in a custody battle with restraining orders.
The “perfect storm” of mass murder symptoms emerges: unresolved trauma + life crisis + failed mental health system + military firearm access = catastrophe.
That should terrify everyone living in the neighborhoods where thousands more just like them are struggling in hidden pain while arming themselves for sudden action.
What Other Countries Do Differently
UK Iraq veterans show similar PTSD rates to Americans—9.4% compared to our estimated 11-20%. But they rarely commit mass shootings.
Why?
Basic gun control means mental health crises don’t escalate to mass casualties. Australia’s comprehensive mental health approach achieves better outcomes despite 22% of defense personnel experiencing mental health problems. Canada emphasizes immediate care access without bureaucratic barriers.
The US has 1.2 guns per person. Australia has 0.13. When mental health crises occur, gun availability determines lethality.
We could have both—the Second Amendment and proper mental health care.
We’ve chosen neither.
This isn’t complicated. Research identifies clear protective factors that reduce violence risk by 76-92% even among high-risk veterans: stable employment, meeting basic needs, social support, comprehensive mental health care, and temporary firearm restrictions during acute crises.
Critical intervention points include:
The transition period: First 3-5 years post-deployment require mandatory mental health screening and follow-up. Each year of delayed PTSD treatment increases symptom persistence by 5%.
Major life stressors: Divorce, death, financial crisis, medical emergencies—these trigger violence regardless of time since service. Brown’s mother died in 2021, twenty years after his Iraq deployment. Sanford served 2007-2008; his attack came seventeen years later.
Crisis presentations: When veterans show up at FBI offices claiming mind control, when families file warnings, when lawsuits get filed against the VA days before attacks—these demand immediate, aggressive intervention.
Comprehensive care: Mental health can’t be separated from financial stress, employment problems, and social isolation. Integrated support addressing all factors works. Fractured, bureaucratic systems fail.
The cost of doing this? Billions annually. The cost of not doing this? We’ve seen it nine times since 2012. We saw it twice in one weekend in September 2025.
We’ll see it again until mental health is prioritized for warriors.
The Human Cost
Twenty-four people are dead across these nine incidents. Dozens more wounded. Families destroyed. Communities traumatized. And nine veterans—who might have been saved with proper care—are dead or facing life in prison.
Everyone lost.
We can’t call these incidents random or ideological.
We can’t frame them as isolated acts of evil. We can’t focus on gun control or security measures or whatever fits our preferred narrative.
We can acknowledge the uncomfortable truth: we created these men. We sent them to war during the bloodiest years of urban combat and sectarian violence. We brought them home with blast injuries, PTSD, and moral injury. We promised them care, then systematically defunded, privatized, and bureaucratized that care until it became effectively inaccessible.
Then we acted shocked when Santiago walked into the FBI saying the CIA controlled his mind—and we sent him home. When Brown’s family said he might snap—and the system said it couldn’t help without a court order. When Edge sued the VA four days before killing three people—and nothing happened.
This is Gross Abandonment of Veterans
Nine Iraq War veterans. Thirteen years. Two dozen dead. Dozens more wounded.
There is no inherent danger from veterans. Ninety-one percent never engage in severe violence. This is about the causes of violence, which means systematic institutional failure to provide promised care to people we trained to kill, sent into impossible political wars, and then left them behind and broken without hope or help.
Until we decide to address this—with funding, with commitment, with the same determination we had when we sent these men to war—it will keep happening.
The warning signs are clear and continuous like a flashing light cutting through the fog of war. They’ve been there for over a decade.
We just don’t seem to care enough as a nation to provide sufficient mental health care to our wounded warriors.