STEPHENVILLE, Texas

Mother ‘just looking for help’ for her son from SEAL sniper

The mother of the former Marine accused of killing “American Sniper” author Chris Kyle and another man testified Tuesday that she didn’t know after asking Kyle to help her troubled son that they’d be going to a shooting range.

Jodi Routh, defendant Eddie Ray Routh’s mother, said under cross-examination by prosecutors she didn’t know Kyle’s plan. Asked if she regretted not telling Kyle of threats Routh had made to kill himself and his family, she said, “I was just looking for help for my son.”

Routh is charged in the deaths of the famed former Navy SEAL sniper who served four tours in Iraq and his friend, Chad Littlefield, at the range in February 2013.

The trial has drawn intense interest, partly because of an Oscar-nominated film based on Kyle’s memoir.

Routh, whose attorneys are mounting an insanity defense, has pleaded not guilty. Family members have said he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq and in Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Jodi Routh said she told Kyle that her son had been hospitalized several times but wasn’t getting the treatment he needed.

“He assured me he knew what Eddie was going through,” she said.

LAS VEGAS

Killed in road rage shooting, mom had fetched armed son

A Las Vegas mother of four killed in a road rage shooting last week got in her car with her adult son and his gun and drove around their neighborhood looking for the assailant who ended up shooting her in a cul-de-sac, police said Tuesday.

In a change from earlier accounts, police Lt. Ray Steiber said 44-year-old Tammy Meyers had her teenage daughter run in the house to fetch her armed son, who then went with her as she drove to find the driver who had earlier stopped his car in front of hers, got out and approached her with angry words.

– From news service reports