Read a version of this story in Arabic. 

Eddie Ray Routh was crying, shirtless, shoeless and smelling of alcohol when police caught up with him walking the streets of his hometown of Lancaster, Texas. 

His family didn't understand what he -- a Marine veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder -- was going through, he told the officer last September 2, according to a police report. 

He had a simple message that was as much a plea as it was a complaint: I'm hurting. 

That visit -- which came after Routh, angry that his father was going to sell his gun, left the house and threatened, his mother told police, to "blow his brains out" -- prompted him to be placed in protective custody and sent to Dallas' Green Oaks Hospital for a mental evaluation. 

Six months later, the 25-year-old Routh is in custody once again -- this time in a central Texas jail, facing murder charges in the deaths of America's self-proclaimed most deadly military sniper ever as well as the sniper's friend. 

He is on a suicide watch and under 24-hour camera surveillance, Erath County Sheriff Tommy Bryant said Monday. 

Should vets with PTSD, mental illness still have access to guns? 

And he's already run into further trouble, becoming aggressive with guards in his cell after refusing to give up a spork and dinner tray Sunday night, according to the sheriff. 

So who is Eddie Ray Routh? 

Bryant has said Routh was in the Marines for four years, though it is unclear how much of that time, if any, was in combat zones. Shay Isham, a lawyer appointed by a judge Monday morning to represent Routh, said his client spent roughly the last two years in and out in Veteran Affairs medical facilities for treatment of mental issues. 
Who is he violent towards in jail?
becoming aggressive with guards in his cell