Yeah

Shawn Nelson

Shawn Timothy Nelson was a US Army veteran and unemployed plumber who, at the age of 35 and under the influence of methamphetamine, stole an M-60 Patton Tank from a National Guard Armory in San Diego, California and went on a rampage on May 17, 1995 destroying cars, fire hydrants, and even an RV, before being shot dead by police.

Personal life
Early life
         Nelson grew up in Clairemont and attended Madison High School. After training as a tank crew member in Fort Knox, Kentucky, Nelson served in the Army from 1978 to 1980, and was part of a tank battalion stationed in Germany. After leaving the army he served on a tuna-fishing boat in Panama. Later, he returned to San Diego.
         He joined a plumbing company and quickly gained a reputation among the clients, who would ask for his services by name. He decided to leave the company and start his own plumbing business.

Problems begin
         Nelson was hospitalized in 1990 for neck and back injuries. He sued the hospital for $1.5 million citing negligence, assault, battery, and false imprisonment. A superior court judge dismissed the case, and the hospital counter-sued for $6,640 in medical fees and legal expenses. Nelson claimed that he was forced to be treated without his consent.
         After divorcing his wife of six years in 1991, and losing both his parents to cancer, Nelson started to lose control. According to his brother, Scott, Shawn Nelson started abusing drugs in 1993, and his life took a drastic change. Neighbors started reporting loud shouting arguments between Nelson and his roommate, calling the police on several occasions. As time went on Nelson started to exhibit very strange behavior. In particular, he dug a 15-foot hole in his backyard in an attempt to mine for gold and other minerals. In February of 1995, he filed a notice informing the county of his plans to mine bedrock in his backyard, even though he was not required to because his backyard was private property. Nelson's fishing friend, Carson Honings, referred to the mine shaft as an eccentric, but not obsessive, "new hobby." In April of the same year, he filed two damage claims against the city totaling $2,000,000. One of them was for police negligence, and the other for false arrest.
         Nelson's neck and back problems, in addition to his plumbing equipment being stolen from his truck, effectively halted his business. With no income, his utilities had been cut off and his house was in foreclosure. In April of 1995, his live-in girlfriend died. Abusing methamphetamines and alcohol, and fighting depression, Nelson was in serious trouble. His brother, Scott, said of him, "My brother was a good man. He'd help anybody. He just couldn't help himself."

Tank rampage
         According to San Diego police, the week before his tank rampage Nelson told a friend that he was thinking of committing suicide, and the following weekend, told a friend that "Oklahoma was good stuff," in apparent reference to the Oklahoma City bombing. Whether Nelson condoned the attack or simply meant that he enjoyed the drama is not clear. Police did not believe Nelson had any connection with the bombing or with a terrorist group.
         At dusk of Wednesday, May 17, 1995, Nelson drove his Chevrolet van to the National Guard Armory in Kearny Mesa. Although the gate to the vehicle yard was usually locked after 5:00PM, employees at the armory were working late, and left the gate open. The vehicle yard was completely deserted. Nelson likely used a crowbar to break open the tank hatch. The first tank he broke into would not start, and neither would the second. As Nelson lowered himself into the third tank, a 57-ton M-60 Patton, he was finally noticed by a Guardsman, who approached the tank. Nelson managed to start the vehicle, and with little chance of stopping him, the Guardsman rushed to a phone and called police. Ammunition was kept in another building, so the vehicle's weapons were not loaded.
         Nelson led police on a 23-minute, televised chase through the streets of the Clairemont neighborhood in San Diego, California. The tank had a top speed of 45 miles per hour, making the chase slow compared to police chases involving automobiles, but it was no less dangerous. The 57-ton tank easily plowed through road signs, traffic lights, and, in what's probably the most famous image of the chase, crushed a van up against an RV, and then plowed straight through the RV, before getting caught on a concrete median of California State Route 163, as he attempted to cross the median into the oncoming traffic. Four police officers climbed onto the tank. Officer Paul Paxton, a sergeant major in the Marine Reserves, cut open the hatch with bolt cutters. The officers ordered Nelson to surrender, but he said nothing and began lurching the tank back and forth in attempt to free it from the median. Afraid Nelson would free the tank and that the four officers would be thrown off, one of them fatally shot him.

Controversy
Police action
         Question was raised whether or not it was necessary for the police to kill Nelson. Scott Nelson himself said police were just doing their job when they shot his brother. Police Captain Tom Hall said that if Nelson managed to free the tank, he "could have taken out no less than 35 vehicles that were passing at that moment." Additionally, police decided that if non-lethal action such as tear-gas was used, this might have stopped Nelson but not the tank, and officers would not be able to enter the tank if it was still moving and with tear-gas present. Barbed wire to tangle the treads was considered, but would not have been effective. Police officials called military personnel and discussed ways of stopping the tank, including using another tank, but all options were considered impractical.

News Coverage
         Station KGTV/Channel 10 broadcast footage of Nelson's bloodied body being pulled from the tank by police both live and during the eleven o'clock news (it was this image that made Scott Nelson realize his brother was the one driving the tank). KGTV was the only station that decided to air this footage. While some people questioned whether it was necessary or appropriate for KGTV to show such images, KGTV then-news director Jeff Klotzman said, "We felt it was a critical part of the story. We warned our viewers three different times (before airing the footage) that it was graphic and it was." Dick Tuinings, news director of KUSI/Channel 51, supported Klotzman's decision, even though his own news program decided not to air the footage.

Armory security
         Officials at the National Guard armory where Nelson stole the tank were criticized for what appeared to be a huge lapse in security, especially after the attack in Oklahoma City on April 19th of that year. In addition to the open, unguarded gate to the vehicle lot, the fence surrounding the lot had damaged barbed wire in some places. Residents near the armory said that even if the gate was locked, Nelson could have simply climbed the fence in sections where the barbed wire was damaged. Armory officials said that only a few people are given keys to the vehicles, that the vehicles were kept far away from fences to make them difficult to reach, that only someone with proper knowledge could operate and even start a tank, and that there was just no way to foresee such an event taking place. After Nelson's theft of the tank, security was tightened at the Kearny Mesa armory.

Shawn Nelson in popular culture
         A documentary film was made that was based on the incident, called Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story.
         Nelson was memorialized by rock musician Mojo Nixon in his song "Tankman Blues" from his 1999 album "The Real Sock Ray Blue".

Smile

Cul De Sac: A Suburban War Story

(2002, Un-rated, 55 Minutes, Subdivision Productions)

In May 1995, the San Diego area was witness to one of the weirdest criminal activities. An unemployed plumber named Shawn Nelson stole a tank from a National Guard compound and drove it wildly through the streets of the suburb of Clairemont, running down light posts, fire hydrants and parked vehicles (but, thankfully, not any people). Nelson gave the police a lengthy chase before he got the tank stuck on a highway divider. The police surrounded the immobilized tank, pried it open with bolt cutters and ordered Nelson to come out. When Nelson refused, the police opened a fatal volley of gunfire into the tank.
This bizarre story, and the equally deranged circumstances which brought it about, is the subject of the documentary Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story. While one would imagine the unusual demise of Shawn Nelson would be enough to accommodate the needs of any movie, filmmaker Garrett Scott strangely decided to pad the film with ill-chosen and frequently incoherent additions which dilute the potency of the intended focus.

Shawn Nelson was only 35 when he was killed, yet his brief life was riddled with considerable problems. An Army veteran who left the service to become a plumber, Nelson fell into a severe drug and alcohol habit. He also became obsessed with the notion that his backyard was home to a gold mine, and the surplus of his time became devoted to digging a mineshaft in search of the buried treasure. (The film estimates the shaft went either 17 or 25 feet into the ground--no one seems to have an accurate measurement.) Nelson's pre-occupation with his gold hunt led him to file for a mineral rights permit with the municipal government.

Unfortunately, Nelson's numerous demons eventually overpowered him. Physically and financially bankrupt, facing a foreclosure on his mortgage and unable to pay for his various addictions, Nelson planned to make one final statement against a world which he felt betrayed him. Recalling his Army training and remembering the National Guard had a compound in his neighborhood, Nelson stole the tank and went on his destructive joyride.

The film never explains how he was able to get the tank away from the National Guard, and no one from the National Guard is interviewed here. Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story does interview Nelson's brother and friends, nearly all of whom (it seems) share some of his pharmaceutical or drinking habits. Their recollections of Nelson are, on the whole, charitable: clearly the man had acute problems, yet the people interviewed here are kind enough to point out Nelson's finer traits and kindness (most notably allowing the neighborhood kids to play in the dirt piles dug up from his mine and his offer to help train other drug addicts in learning how to become a plumber). Nelson was not a stupid man, by any stretch, as his backyard mine was a model of professional engineering and his bookcase was packed with volumes on mining; that he would consider filing for mineral rights, while seemingly ludicrous on the surface, was actually an intelligent idea if the brief possibility of gold on his property actually proved to be correct. Watching the film, it is heartbreaking to realize no one (either Nelson or anyone around him) was able to channel his talents properly.

Unfortunately, Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story has problems concentrating on the Shawn Nelson story. For no very clear reason, the film decides that it needs to provide in-depth insight on the Clairemont community's history. A boom suburb following World War II and the Korean War, the community was home to many returning servicemen who found work in the local defense manufacturing industry. But when that industry slumped and then departed from the area in the 1980s, Clairemont's fortunes reversed and it became a less-than-desirable neighborhood. However, none of this information relates to Shawn Nelson's self-destructive fate (he was a plumber, remember?) and the film would have been better served if this background data was limited to a few minutes rather than approximately one-third of the running time (complete with snooze-inducing interviews of local bigwigs and out-of-nowhere newsreel footage of post-war Germany, the 1952 capture of Seoul by US troops and the bombing of Phuoc Thanh by US Air Force jets in the 1960s).

The film's view of contemporary Clairemont also needs to be addressed. I am not familiar with this community and I have no illusions that this is a neighborhood with its share of problems. However, the film gives the impression that everyone who lives here are drug addicts and drunks. Most egregious is the sight-seeing tour given by an Officer George Eliseo of the local constabulary. Officer Eliseo drives about highlighting the local attractions, pointing to the house where an alcoholic lives, then pointing to where a meth addict dwells, then pointing out where another druggie hangs his hat. What's the matter, aren't there any non-addicted, decent, hard-working individuals living in Clairemont? And if Officer Eliseo was serious about community beautification, he might want to excuse himself from the premises: the disheveled, paunchy patrolman is in quick need of a decent haircut and a girdle, and he should clean himself up before commenting on other people's flaws.

The story of Shawn Nelson is a genuine tragedy and it is a shame Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story loses track of the poor man's self-powered crash. Hopefully, a better film on this intriguing subject can be made.
by Phil Hall

Cul de Sac's Dead End Joy Ride

Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story by filmmaker Garrett Scott examines how a city's descent into obsolescence can affect the minds of those who live there, and drive them to lash out at a system that has abandoned them.

When Californian Shawn Nelson stole an army tank in 1995 and drove through the streets of his San Diego suburb, smashing cars and fire hydrants before being shot dead by police, many dismissed the incident as the act of a deranged man.
Filmmaker Garrett Scott saw something more. Nelson came from Clairemont, a suburb Scott knew well. The area had been in decline since the end of the Cold War, when the contracts to the local ships and arms building industries dried up. Nelson had lost his job and his wife, and like many people in his town was using drugs.

For Scott, Nelson's tank rampage was the perfect culmination of the effects of the social and economic changes he had been observing in the area in recent years. It also came at a time when Scott had been thinking about how one's community and one's place in it affect the mind.

"So when this guy steals this tank that is the ultimate emblem of the military industrial complex and a sign of American supremacy, it all folded in on itself in this suburb. And it all just seemed to make a lot of sense in one concise way."

The incident spurred Scott to write his documentary, Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story. After interviewing Nelson's friends and family and talking with city planners, Scott has come to the conclusion that Nelson was, effectively, a casualty of the decline of his hometown.

Clairemont was built in the '40s and '50s to house the thousands who migrated there to work in San Diego's booming defence industries. But the town started running down in the early 90s when those companies began leaving town after Communism fell. Instead of reinventing itself, the town just sort of died, and that didn't make sense to Scott.

"There are towns all over the place (such as Flint, Michigan) that are defunct. It's very common there. It's not common on the West Coast."

Scott decided that the problem stems from the way that capital is invested in certain regions. In Clairemont's case, that capital came from the federal government.

"All these missiles and bombs [that Clairemont helped build] came from U.S. tax dollars," he says. "…So you have 30,000 people working essentially for the government. They think it's a free market economy, that they're working for private companies, but it's entirely subsidized and had been for 40 years."

When the contracts dried up, Clairemont was left out to dry. Many of those who have remained feel cheated by Washington. "These people feel angry, they're alienated," Scott says. "Because at one point, they felt supported by the government and they were paying their dues to the cause - I mean these are very nationalistic people. And they feel deeply angry towards the government."

The end of Clairemont's boom times was the end of Nelson's sense of place and the beginning of his decline. "Capital affects people's lives," Scott says. "It affects the emotional structures that they're used to living with. And these things break down very quickly once the money stops coming in."

When things broke down, many in town turned to a drug that has a long history in Clairemont: methamphetamine. As Scott found out, the "speed" derivative was handed to pilots during the war to keep them awake during long missions. A lot of those pilots came home hooked and found they could make the drug in their homes easily and cheaply with everyday items.

Scott says methamphetamine is unique in that it causes sort of schizophrenic symptoms so that users can't sleep for days at a time and sometimes become delusional. That might explain why Shawn Nelson believed he had discovered gold in his backyard. He dug a 20-foot deep shaft there and staked an official claim on the "find."

By the time Nelson stole the tank, the bank had foreclosed on his home and all his utilities had been cut off. His friends say he had been talking about stealing a tank for years. They too, were feeling the anger, the frustration, and the sense of disenfranchisement that had taken over Nelson. Many even said they wished they could have done it.

In the end, it was Shawn Nelson who stole the tank from the local armoury and "raged against the machine" for half an hour, flattening cars and knocking over fire hydrants. Thankfully, no one was hurt -- except for Nelson, who was shot dead by police when his tank eventually got stuck on a highway median.

Seven years later, Scott says Clairemont is changing. Younger people are moving in, tearing down the old prefab war-time houses and putting up new ones. Because it's near the ocean, the real estate will always be valuable. But the old Clairemont is essentially done and the memories of glories of the boom times are fading. Little has changed for the original people and many are struggling to survive. Scott wonders whether they have been forgotten as time marches forward.

"When the urban planners in the film say the development has reached 'the end of its useful life', they're really talking about the people. They're talking about the skills those people have and the way those people live," Scott says. "This often happens in the United States: when people say a place is falling apart or become obsolete, they really mean the people."
by Angela Mulholland, CTV News Staff

Rampage

In May 1995, the San Diego area was witness to one of the weirdest criminal activities in recent memory. An unemployed plumber named Shawn Nelson stole a tank from a National Guard compound and drove it wildly through the streets of the suburb of Clairemont, running down light posts, fire hydrants and parked vehicles (but, thankfully, not any people). Nelson gave the police a lengthy chase before he got the tank stuck on a highway divider. The police surrounded the immobilized tank, pried it open with bolt cutters and ordered Nelson to come out. When Nelson refused, the police opened a fatal volley of gunfire into the tank.Shawn Nelson was only 35 when he was killed, yet his brief life was riddled with considerable problems. An Army veteran who left the service to become a plumber, Nelson fell into a severe drug and alcohol habit. He also became obsessed with the notion that his backyard was home to a gold mine, and the surplus of his time became devoted to digging a mineshaft in search of the buried treasure. (The film estimates the shaft went either 17 or 25 feet into the ground--no one seems to have an accurate measurement.) Nelson's pre-occupation with his gold hunt led him to file for a mineral rights permit with the municipal government.

Unfortunately, Nelson's numerous demons eventually overpowered him. Physically and financially bankrupt, facing a foreclosure on his mortgage and unable to pay for his various addictions, Nelson planned to make one final statement against a world which he felt betrayed him. Recalling his Army training and remembering the National Guard had a compound in his neighborhood, Nelson stole the tank and went on his destructive joyride. Guys Who Steal Big Vehicles And Go Nuts

Say no to meth

Man on meth steals a National Guard tank in San Diego and goes on a rampage, ending in his death on State Highway 163.Monday was odd documentary day on The Sundance Film Channel and I was able to sit down and watch one short one. It was called Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story. It's an obscure little work about Shawn Nelson, the guy that in 1995 stole a tank and, until the police killed him, roared along a street in Clairmont California, smashing cars and tearing down traffic poles.

You've seen the footage, I'm sure - I know I had many times, usually on one of those World's Hairiest Police Chases - type shows. He's rampaging down suburban streets, veering out of his way to smash cars like stomping on beer cans. Broken-off fire hydrants spray skyward in towering fountains. He rams a couple RV's; which explode into kindling. No backstory is ever given - only that the man was crazed.

The documentary has no voiceover - it shows a mix of interviews with Nelson's friends stirred up with news footage of the chase and historic films of Clairmont's defense industry.

That's one weakness of the film. The director tries to implicate the government's use of Methamphetamine by bomber pilots during WWII and the demise of the defense industry in San Diego (a lot of time is wasted in archive footage of happy workers at Convair and General Dynamics assembling missiles and bombers intercut with devastation in Europe and Korea - we already know all that) with the ultimate doom of Shawn Nelson. The filmmaker never closes the deal, however. The neighborhood might be spiraling downhill - but Nelson was a successful plumber at one time - his insanity and demise wasn't the government, it was speed.

Some guy in the film (I'm not sure who - maybe a local professor) has one interesting insight into the Meth terror in the town. He said, "This suburb was settled by hard-working, independent people. Methamphetamine is a terribly attractive drug to them, because, in the short term it makes you more hard-working and independent." Longer-term, of course, it kills you.

The film does succeed in painting a terrifying picture of speed addiction (a non-fiction Spun). The guy was totally freaked. He actually did something crazier (if a little safer) than steal a tank. He had a gold mine dug in his back yard. A horrifying segment of the film shows some live evening news as the frightened reporter works his way through the unbelievable trash of the house to take a look at the 25 foot deep hole dug into the back yard. When it's finally shown, you're shocked at how professional the dig itself looks.

He was serious about the gold thing. That's why he stole the tank - he was on his way down to City Hall to protest the fact that they were slow to issue him a mining claim in his backyard. He seemed to know what he was doing - at least a little. He had converted his hot tub into a sluice. He had a small army of local tweakers dedicated to helping him with his project. "It was really weird down in that hole, man," one says. What an awful picture - a bunch of speed freaks digging a gold shaft 24-7 down in a suburban San Diego back yard.

He was working his insane scam in a couple directions. "All these tweakers would do anything he wanted," one frightening woman, obviously high, said, "They all wanted out and he promised he'd teach 'em to be plumbers." They all actually believed that there was gold down there. Apparently Nelson was buying flakes of gold, mixing it in with the dirt, to, "Convince the tweakers to keep working until they actually hit the real thing." Eventually, of course, he ran out of money - no utilities on his house that was about to be foreclosed, no more gold, and, most importantly, no more drugs.

That was when he went completely over and stole the tank, refusing to give up until the police shot him while the tank was stuck on a highway median. One of Nelson's friends went on a long tirade about how the police didn't need to shoot him - that he didn't deserve it. Ummm, I realize that police and deadly force is a difficult subject, one with many issues... but this wasn't some teenager with a Saturday Night Special. The guy HAD A TANK and was not afraid to use it. He had broken out onto a freeway and was heading downtown. It's incredible that nobody was hurt - he was crushing as many cars as he could - he didn't know for sure they were empty. As one other friend said, "Thank goodness it wasn't loaded."

There is a hole at the center of the documentary, though, and that was Shawn Nelson himself. There is very little about his past. I would like to have seen more about him and less about General Dynamics. He was a veteran; that's how he knew how to drive a tank - but the film never delves into exactly how he was able to get the thing out of the National Guard Armory. Other than the drugs and the insanity he remains as much as enigma as he was when we saw that tank rumbling around on the evening news.

Tanks for visiting

If we're talking tanks, this is the classic image we've all seen. Rewind this scene and then have the lead tank driver be on meth. Squish.