Rampage in Steel: The San Diego Tank Rampage

This episode follows a local resident whose life had unraveled in the years leading up to a crime that left San Diego residents in disbelief. It is the story of a community under siege, a man in crisis, and a day many San Diegans will never forget. 

Season 2 Episode 1 - Rampage of Steel: The Tank Terror of San Diego from California Crime with Amy Jean, a true crime podcast based out of California.

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Music written, composed and produced by Josh and Amy Alvarado.

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Transcript

Cold Intro

Speaker 1 0:00

On the evening of May 17, 1995, a man entered the California National Guard Armory in San Diego, California. Although the gate to the vehicle yard was usually locked after 5 p.m., employees were working late and left the gate open. The man managed to start an M60A3 patent tank. Once in control of the tank, he embarked on a path of destruction through the streets of San Diego. This is the story of the San Diego Tank Rampage.

Introduction to CCAJ

Speaker 1 0:48

Hello. This is California Crime with Amy Jean. On this podcast, we will be covering true crime stories bi-weekly. Earlier, I started this episode with a look into the beginning of a rampage, but now I will take you to the start of this story. Shawn Timothy

Who was Shawn Nelson?

Speaker 1 1:06

Nelson was born August 21st, 1959, in California. Nelson was a bright, popular, hardworking adolescent while growing up in Claremont. He was the second of three sons born to Fred Nelson, a custodian, and his wife Betty, who worked on an electronics assembly line. He joined the Army in 1978 and served in a tank battalion in Germany. According to the Army, in 1980, he was honorably discharged for, quote, multifaceted disciplinary problems. At

Breaking into the National Guard Armory

Speaker 1 1:39

dusk on Wednesday, May 17, 1995, at approximately 6.30 p.m., Nelson drove his Chevrolet van to the California Army National Guard Armory in Kearney Mesa, a neighborhood in San Diego. The vehicle yard is completely deserted. A shirtless and disheveled Nelson likely uses a crowbar to break open the tank catches. The tanks start with a push button and do not require an ignition key. The first two tanks he breaks into will not start. The third tank does, and is a 57-ton 31-foot-long M6083 tank carrying an anti-aircraft gun, a machine gun, and a 105-millimeter cannon. It's later reported by the National Guard that the tank is not armed with shells as ammunition is kept in another building, so none of the vehicle's weapons can be loaded or used by Nelson. Once it starts up, he crashes through the armory gates and takes off. San Diego police officers first become aware of the situation when undercover detectives who happen to be conducting surveillance in the area as part of a robbery detail witnessed a tank crash through a gate. One of the detectives immediately reports the incident. The San Diego Police Department officially learned of the unfolding event at 6.46 p.m. when the detectives radio that he is following Nelson.

San Diego Under Siege

Speaker 1 3:05

SDPD units head to intercept the tank, and California State Route 163 is closed. An SDPD captain later said of Nelson's tank skills, quote, he obviously knew what he was doing. He was working that tank pretty good, end quote. The tank, emitting black exhaust smoke, circles the neighborhood, crushing cars and ramming into traffic lights. The 57-ton tank easily plows through road signs and an RV. Nelson even attempts to knock down a bridge by running into its supports, but gives up after he fails to topple it with the first few hits.

Speaker 3 3:42

Everybody go back in your house, get off the street. This is the San Diego Police Department. Everybody get off the street and go back into your house right now. Everybody go back in your house right now.

Speaker 1 3:52

Neighbors would later describe the electricity suddenly shutting off and the sound of grinding steel tearing through the neighborhood. One neighbor runs out of his house to check the commotion and finds the army tank rolling towards him. The neighbor would tell reporters, quote, before I could do anything, it ran right over my truck, end quote.

Speaker 3 4:17

He's doing these kind of on purpose.

Speaker 1 4:20

Neighbors can also see Nelson laughing and staring wildly from the tank's turret as he rolls through the city. A 15-year-old girl is in the family minivan when Nelson rumbles towards them. Quote, he threw back his head. He was laughing and his eyes were bulging out of their sockets. End quote. Once on Baltic Street, the tank drives across a lawn and stops 20 feet from a house before it backs up and clips a fire hydrant, sending a 50-foot geyser into the air. From there, it heads west on Balboa Avenue, a strip of restaurants and apartment stores, where it brings down several traffic lights and shatters a bus stop bench. During the rampage, Nelson seems to be avoiding people and targeting public utilities.

The Tank Becomes Stuck

Speaker 1 5:44

Four police officers climb onto the tank. A SCPD officer wearing shorts and tennis shoes at the time of the confrontation stated, quote, I couldn't open the loader's hatch. I was yelling to the other officers that I needed my bolt cutters from the back of the trunk. One of the officers threw them up. I cut the lock off, end quote.

The Final Confrontation

Speaker 1 6:04

Officers can see Nelson from the bottom of his shoulder blades up. They can also see him working the controls. He's trying to steer the tank. Officers order Nelson to surrender. They yell at him to stop and turn off the tank. Nelson looks back, making eye contact with them. He doesn't utter a word. He begins lurching the tank back and forth in an attempt to free it from the median. Officers make their decision. An officer leans in and shoots Nelson once in the left shoulder, the bullet traveling through Nelson's body and killing him instantly. Despite the widespread property destruction, Nelson was the only fatality in the incident. In

Damage and Possible Motives

Speaker 1 7:09

the end, 40 vehicles have been crushed in the six-mile rampage, and 5,000 people are left without electricity for hours. Nelson led police on a 23-minute televised chase through the streets of the Claremont neighborhood of San Diego and then State Route 163. Police said he may have been heading toward Sharp Memorial Hospital, which he had been embroiled in a legal fight for negligence and false imprisonment after he got into a fight with an emergency room security guard. At the time, he was being treated for a broken neck from a 1990 motorcycle accident. According to friends, he also blamed the hospital for his mother's death. Police believe that Nelson may have been bound for the hospital on some kind of revenge mission. To understand a possible motive for the half-hour of destruction, here is Nelson's backstory. After leaving the Army, Nelson married and spent five years working for reasonable plumbing. In 1991, he took a major step forward by starting his own plumbing business. However, his life began to unravel after the death of his mother from cancer in 1988, which coincided with a significant increase in his drug use. This ultimately led to the breakdown of his marriage as his wife left him due to his substance abuse. Four years after his mother's death, his father passed away. In the year leading up to the rampage, police responded to Nelson's home nine times, with some of the calls involving reports of domestic violence. His yard was filled with household garbage, scrap metal, and engine parts. Neighbors said he mowed his lawn in the middle of the night and had been drinking since a split from his girlfriend. In the months leading to Nelson stealing the tank, he had filed for mineral rights with the city and dug his own mineshaft in his backyard. The mineshaft was elaborate and more sophisticated than one may imagine. In footage taken from a local news outlet, a deep vertical tunnel housed in a reinforced steel wooden structure leads to a 17-foot descending drop. Mounds of dirt and rock dotted his backyard. Nelson did believe he had gold on his property after he found what he believed to be a golden nugget. That alleged find would inspire him to get into gold mining. He would recruit locals to help him dig in the hole. Many of his friends confirmed that the people who Nelson would invite to help him were drug addicts from the area. Shortly thereafter, Nelson's van and plumbing tools, his only source of income, were stolen. His utilities were cut off and a bank foreclosed on his home. And then in what his family said was a heartbreaking blow, his live-in girlfriend Michelle moved out. Three months prior to the 23-minute spree, Nelson told a friend, quote, watch the satellites. One of these days I'm gonna take a tank and drive it, park it at City Hall on the steps, and demand live TV so I can make my statement. End quote. Those who knew him said Nelson wasn't a terrorist, or, quote, hyped up on G.I. Joe type stuff. Two days before his rampage, he borrowed money for medicine to treat an earache. A friend and former employer stated, quote, the last time I talked to Sean, I could tell something was wrong. He said, I can't hear. I need to talk to my brother. Where's Scott? His voice was really desperate. End quote.

Family and Friends Perspective

Speaker 1 10:34

Nelson's brother Scott commented that his brother was screaming, trying to get some attention. Scott stated that he saw the rampage on TV and at the time didn't know his brother was involved. Nelson's ex-girlfriend Michelle called Scott. She didn't speak and he urged her to say something. She revealed, quote, the guy in the tank is your brother. Scott replied, no, don't say that. Scott was told he needed to contact the coroner's office or the police. He stated to a documentary crew that he didn't want to talk to them, but eventually did. The police wanted him to positively identify Nelson through pictures, which Scott wasn't able to do. He finally could see it was his brother from news footage of him being taken out of the tank, already dead. After the rampage, friends of Nelson criticized authorities for killing him. They believed that the police could have used tear gas or tried to talk him out of the tank. But along the way, Nelson crashed into a van, hurting a mother and child, although they only suffered minor injuries. Speaking about the incident at the time, San Diego police captain Tom Hall said, quote, you've got a 53-ton vehicle driven by someone purposely hitting vehicles that are occupied. That is a serious threat to public safety, end quote.

The Aftermath

Speaker 1 11:52

The state of California paid about $150,000 to cover property damage from the May 17th incident. It moved military tanks out of all National Guard armories statewide, relocating them to Camp Roberts in San Luis Obispo and Fort Irwin in Barstow. The incident raised awareness about the importance of safeguarding military equipment and has led to discussions on better security measures to prevent unauthorized access in the future. The National Guard was considered negligent, so the state eventually paid the damage claims of 28 individuals, companies, and the city, according to public documents. The payout included $10,000 for Pacific Bell, over $12,000 to the city of San Diego, and over $40,000 to San Diego Gas and Electric. The rest was paid to citizens, mostly for damage to motor vehicles. The district attorney announced that San Diego police were justified in using deadly force to stop Nelson.

Police Officer Rick Piner's Experience

Speaker 2 12:53

Thanks for joining us. I'm Marianne Kushi. It was a day that terrorized but also mesmerized people in San Diego and around the world as they watch this unfold. Rick Piner is the officer who shot Sean Nelson. He's currently retired and no longer lives in San Diego. He shared his memory of how that moment unfolded.

Speaker 13:14

Paul was already up there and Howard Laborde was up there. So I went up. My partner Phil Cady boosted me up. And when Paul got the hatch open, I could see the guy in there. And I was Paul was shouting commands to everybody around, and we were talking to the guy inside basically not talking with, just talking to, because he wasn't answering. But uh I remember the tank was lurching. I remember I looked up and I'm looking towards northbound traffic on the 163 that not many nobody had stopped. And I knew that if that tank lurched over the center divide at that time, that we would be heading into oncoming traffic. And that's when I made a decision to fire.

Speaker 2 13:56

Did you fear for your life?

Speaker 14:00

My life, Paul's life, Howard's life, the guys in the tank's life, everybody on the freeways in life. Yeah.

Speaker 2 14:07

A lot of people probably asked you, did you have to do that? Was that were you left with no choice?

Speaker 14:15

I think we were left with no choice. I mean, we'd already called for SWAT. SWAT said they couldn't help. You got a 60-ton tank that's made for war driving on the freeway, and you got three cops on top of it. I mean, what else can we do? We didn't know that there was anybody else in it. We didn't know whether he brought guns on board the tank or not. We didn't know anything about it. We were just with that situation and we reacted as we'd been trained the best we could.

Speaker 2 14:42

How did it change your life?

Speaker 14:46

Well, I was awarded several awards to the police department. I mean, I became known throughout the police department. Um involved in a fatal incident, it changes your life in subtle ways that I mean you don't even realize that trouble sleeping later on in life, things like that. You don't even think you know, there could be things that I I do now that I don't even equate to what happened, but it's entirely possible.

Speaker 2 15:17

That moment though it had to have made an impact because going back over it with oh I mean it brought back a lot of visuals for me. So are the memories still vivid?

Speaker 15:35

Oh yeah, I mean it's uh it's funny that you know, out of all the psychological classes I've taken over the years, humans are the only species we know of that can actually recreate physiological symptoms from a memory. So when I think back on it and people ask about it, I talk about it, you know, my my heart rate goes up, my breathing gets shallower, you know, I can feel the same emotions and the feelings that I felt when it happened just by talking about it 30 years later. I I won't say it was just another day in police work because it wasn't. That was something truly out of the box. And nobody knew what to do, including me. Uh, but now I think that, you know, just like we learn from our tragedies, everything we do, we use the okay, if this happens again, what can we do?

Closing Thoughts

Speaker 1 16:31

The events leading up to the damage were undeniably tragic, and Nelson's death marked a sorrowful end to a long and difficult struggle. His brother later explained that Nelson had been a man deeply in need of help. Scott told reporters, quote, the man who died yesterday was only a shell of the person we loved. The real Sean died two years ago at the hands of drugs and alcohol. We are very sorry for all the damage done and very thankful that no one was hurt. End quote. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, follow, or leave a review or comment. Thank you to my wonderful husband and sound engineer for all of his post-production work. I'm your host, Amy Jean. Stay safe and take care of you.