War veteran accused of killing sniper had been in mental hospital

The Iraq War veteran charged with gunning down a former Navy Seal sniper and his friend at a Texas shooting range had been released from a mental hospital about a week earlier and had been “acting a little weird,” his brother-in-law told an emergency dispatcher in a recording of the call released on Tuesday.

Shortly after the shootings, Eddie Ray Routh’s sister told an operator that her brother had come to her house and confessed to killing two people, according to a recording of the frantic call released by Midlothian police.

Routh, 25, is charged with one count of capital murder and two counts of murder in the deaths of Chris Kyle, author of the best-selling book American Sniper, and his friend Chad Littlefield. He’s jailed in Erath County on US$3 million bail and is on suicide watch.

Kyle, who had earned a reputation as one of the military’s most lethal snipers while serving in Iraq, had a second book in the works, according to Sharyn Rosenblum, a spokeswoman for publisher William Morrow. No release date has been set for the new book, titled American Gun: A History of the US in Ten Firearms, and co-author by William Doyle.

In the emergency call on Saturday, Routh’s sister Laura Blevins told the operator that Routh is “psychotic” and she’s afraid he will return to her house.

“I don’t know if he’s being honest with me,” Blevins says, referring to his confession. “I don’t know if he’s on drugs or not.”

Her husband told the operator that Routh was released from a mental hospital about a week ago and that he had been “acting a little weird.” Routh’s brother-in-law also tells the operator that Routh was recently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The brother-in-law’s name could not be heard on the recording, though part of it was unintelligible.