By admin 
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — “There’s an element of delusion that you don’t generally see with someone with PTSD.”
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That’s how forensic psychologist John Delatorre describes Matthew Ammel, the Army veteran and former bodyguard who is accused of trashing former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s Cave Creek home and whose behavior has only escalated since his arrest.
Psychologist: Ammel still “living” in 2007
Delatorre said Ammel appears stuck in the past, unable to separate his military deployments from the present.
“This is someone who is still kind of living life as if it is 2006, 2007, 2008. He’s still living as if his deployments to all of these different places recently happened,” Delatorre said.
“In his mind, he’s lost basically everything,” Delatorre said.
Criminal defense attorney Brenna Fisher, who has no connection to the case, said the pattern isn’t unusual in cases involving former romantic partners but added a caveat about how Ammel is thinking.
“This kind of high-emotion, high-intensity cases are common with former romantic partners,” Fisher said.
“It’s rare that people commit crimes when they are in a solid mental state,” Fisher said.
August incident
Court documents say video evidence shows Ammel trashing Sinema’s home on Aug. 30 by throwing 22 paintings into her pool, breaking expensive alcohol bottles and shattering a mirror. Detectives say he caused $200,000 in damage because Sinema refused to post a video on Twitter.
Ammel was petitioned to a mental health facility for weeks before being booked Sept. 18. A grand jury later indicted him on a charge of criminal damage, a domestic violence offense.
New allegations escalate the case
Investigators say Ammel’s crimes continued after his arrest. While out on an ankle monitor, Arizona authorities heard from a North Carolina sheriff’s lieutenant that Ammel was “attempting to procure a firearm and other tactical equipment” and “made threats towards a North Carolina judge” on Sept. 29.
His GPS tracker showed he was at a north Phoenix firearms store that day, where he left a large hunting-style knife to be engraved. He is also accused of asking military friends to build him a rifle and of trying to contact Sinema through a third party, threatening to “take her down.”
A judge told Ammel he was in court because he allegedly violated the conditions of his pretrial release.
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Second arrest, courtroom moment
A felony warrant was issued, and an adult probation officer convinced Ammel to walk to a Cheesecake Factory across from the Phoenix hotel where he had been staying, leading to his second arrest.
Ammel tried to explain the knife to the judge.
“So, the knife that I had in my possession, I just transported it from a storage unit to an engraving shop to have it engraved for my nephew that graduated from Marine Corps boot camp,” Ammel said.
“Sorry, you just should not have had a weapon. That’s not a particularly interesting fact,” the judge said.
Missed hearing
A status conference for the criminal damage charge was scheduled for Oct. 1, but Ammel did not appear despite being in custody on the new allegations. The judge said he refused transport.
The judge set a new court date for Oct. 15 and ordered “that the defendant be brought to court by any means necessary, including force.”
Ammel’s account
Ammel sent emails to Arizona’s Family saying the initial incident was triggered by a “stress-induced mental breakdown.”
He said the video he wanted Sinema to share related to his time in combat in 2007, and that he asked her to “use her connections at the Pentagon to look into why my unit didn’t get the Presidential Unit Citation for that deployment” — the same fixation on his 2007 deployment that Delatorre pointed to as a sign of his disconnect from the present.
Related civil suit
The allegations come as Ammel’s ex-wife is suing Sinema for breaking up their 14-year marriage. According to the complaint, Ammel suffers from substance abuse, PTSD, and traumatic brain injuries.
North Carolina charges
Ammel is also accused of strangling a health care worker in 2025 while involuntarily committed to a mental health facility in North Carolina.
Ammel remains in custody with a $25,000 bond.
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