The widow of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, who was shot by a Marine reservist he was trying to help, said that she does not forgive her husband’s killer and that she rejects arguments that post-traumatic stress disorder was the reason for the murder.
“You’re not going to blame someone else, in my opinion, when you murder two people in cold blood,” said Taya Kyle, 38, in a CBS report.
Eddie Ray Routh is charged with shooting and killing Mr. Kyle — dubbed “America’s Deadliest Sniper” — and his friend Chad Littlefield at a Texas gun range in February. Mr. Routh, 25, said he was suffering from PTSD during the shootings. Mrs. Kyle scoffs at that claim, however.
“[Those with PTSD] worked through their struggles, just like we work through our struggles,” she said in the CBS article. “They are phenomenal people and it doesn’t change their character. Might change their mood once in a while, might have sleepless nights, doesn’t make them a murderer.”
She also said in an interview with the New York Post published earlier this month that it didn’t appear that Mr. Routh actually suffered from PTSD.
Kyle, a best-selling author of “American Sniper,” was finishing up a new book, “American Gun: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms,” when he was killed. Mrs. Kyle lives with their two children in the same Dallas home she shared with her husband.
“I miss everything,” she said in the Daily Mail. “He was patient, supportive, funny, loving. I miss his hands, hugs. I miss him laughing with the kids every day. I don’t think there’s much that I don’t miss about him. One of a kind.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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