Army veteran Jeremy Culp, 32, was shot and killed Oct. 15, 2024, by Texas police. He served in the 82nd Airborne Division and deployed to Afghanistan in 2012. (Photo provided by Culp family)

AUSTIN, Texas — When Jeremy Culp woke up Tuesday morning, he was convinced his Bridge City home was under siege.

He shared the house on Oak Circle Drive with his mother, but it was almost as if he were looking through her, said Daren Johns, the Army veteran’s uncle. His sister Kathryn Culp declined to speak publicly about her son but gave Johns permission to do so.

“He started patrolling the house and it was like impending doom,” Johns said. “I guess he was at war again.”

Culp, 32, had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder but it had been a few years since his symptoms had manifested in this way. For the most part, he’d been the funny, outgoing kid they knew before he served in combat in Afghanistan.

But his symptoms Tuesday and the incidences that followed led to Culp’s death later that day — shot and killed by police firing more than 25 rounds as he lay face-down on a sidewalk near a middle school football field.

Culp had a semiautomatic rifle on him that morning and can be seen in a bystander’s video of his death surrendering to police. Police said he then reached back for the weapon, but the video isn’t clear.

“If his hands were on the concrete, it’s homicide. If his hands were on the gun, it’s justified. That’s the only question I have,” Johns said.

Culp served three years in the Army, leaving the service as a private, according to his official service record. He deployed to Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division in 2012 when several thousand members of the unit conducted one of the final major combat offenses of the war.

He also suffered a traumatic brain injury during his enlistment, Johns said. During low-altitude jump training, Culp hit his head on the opening of the aircraft and was knocked unconscious. His parachute brought him safely to the ground but he spent five days in a coma, his uncle said.

Culp returned from combat in August 2012 and then was back to civilian life just five months later in Bridge City, a town of almost 10,000 people in southeast Texas near the state border with Louisiana.

For a time, Johns said his nephew really struggled with PTSD, which gave him bouts of severe anxiety and paranoia. He received disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs but his uncle wasn’t certain what other resources Culp used.

Culp had been arrested five times in different counties in the region and convicted of drug possession, domestic violence and resisting an arrest or search between 2010 and 2019, according to state records. His final probation ended in 2022.

The odds of being involved with the criminal justice system are 61% greater for veterans with PTSD than for those without the condition, according to the Counsel on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank focused on criminal justice policy and research. Veterans with a traumatic brain injury who had a previous arrest were 49% more likely to be arrested again.

Symptoms of each illness can manifest as hypervigilance, aggression, impulsiveness and misappraisal of a threat, according to the counsel.

Until Tuesday, much of that was well in Culp’s past, Johns said. He worked as a field officer for the International Masonry Union and enjoyed the travel that came with it. In March, he used the VA’s home loan program to buy his house from his father.

“He just really was a sweet boy…,” Johns said. “He just got lost.”

As Culp’s mother watched him patrol their home before 9 a.m. Tuesday, she became anxious herself. She called her other son who asked her to go outside so he could pick her up. At about that time, Culp began to fire shots from inside the house toward the outside, Johns said. Neighbors heard the shots and called the police.

“He was trying to cover himself, I guess,” Johns said. “Then he got in his truck and ran. He was trying to get away.”

At a narrow bridge over Cow Bayou, Culp hit an out-of-town police officer on a motorcycle who was escorting a truck with an oversized load.

Five law enforcement agencies joined the high-speed chase along State Highway 73, past a motor vehicle office, a Walmart and a city park. He drove through one of the major intersections in town and got a flat tire somewhere along the way.

Now about 9 miles from home, Culp crashed his white Dodge Ram four-door truck into a utility pole just outside of West Orange-Stark Middle School. A man driving in the area began a live stream on social media.

The cellphone video is shaky and grainy but Culp, wearing a dark-colored T-shirt, puts his semiautomatic rifle onto the ground and lays stomach down onto the sidewalk. About five police officers begin to circle him with their guns drawn as an empty school bus drives through the intersection and temporarily blocks the camera’s angle.

Sgt. Shana Clark from the Department of Public Safety said Tuesday that Culp then reached back for the gun and pointed it at the officers. More than 25 gunshots can be heard on the video in about eight seconds. Police have not said how many officers fired their weapons or how many rounds were spent.

Johns also watched the video and said he just can’t tell whether his nephew reached for his weapon again. He wants to see footage from police-worn body cameras.

“You see him surrendering, clearly on his knees, hands behind his head, laying on the concrete, spreading his arms. Then in the seconds that follow, the video’s just so distant that you can’t tell. You can’t determine whether or not he reached for that weapon again or not,” he said.

The Texas Rangers, a state police force that typically investigates when local police are involved in a shooting, have taken over the investigation of Culp’s death. Aside from a description of events released Tuesday, officials have declined to release further information.

Culp’s funeral is scheduled for Oct. 26 in Orange.