Green Beret Duke Webb says training-related brain injury led to 2020 shooting

Sgt. First Class Duke Webb, an active-duty Green Beret, opened fire at a bowling alley in Rockford, Ill., in 2020, killing three people and wounding three others. He has admitted pulling the trigger, has pleaded not guilty and has been awaiting trial since the shooting. Webb and people close to him say years of Special Operations training — with repeated exposure to blast waves in noncombat exercises — accumulated into brain injury that changed his behavior.

After 12 years in uniform and seven deployments he developed severe headaches, a facial tic, memory lapses and conspiratorial anxiety. The Army never formally diagnosed a brain injury, but medical officers prescribed memantine, a drug approved for late-stage Alzheimer’s that can rarely cause psychosis; Webb’s lawyers argue the medication pushed his injured brain past its limits.

The Army sent a psychologist to assess Webb in jail and moved to discharge him, but the psychologist wrote he was not fit to be discharged and showed signs of a brief psychotic disorder, PTSD and a brain injury. The Army discharged him anyway with an "other than honorable" rating, cutting him off from veterans’ medical care and benefits.

Special Operations Command acknowledged to The New York Times that routine training and blast overpressure can pose risks and said it was changing some training and increasing screening.

Key Topics

Health, Duke Webb, Rockford Illinois, Green Berets, U.s. Army, Memantine