Community Voices: The San Diego Tank Rampage - A Firsthand Account

On May 17, 1995, San Diego watched in disbelief as a stolen military tank rumbled through city streets and onto State Route 163, leaving destruction in its wake.

In this special Community Voices episode, a firsthand witness shares her memories of that unforgettable day. From the shock of seeing the tank to reflecting on how the experience has stayed with her over the years, this conversation offers a deeply personal perspective on one of San Diego's most extraordinary events.

While history often remembers the headlines, the people who lived through these moments carry stories that deserve to be heard. Community Voices is dedicated to preserving those memories with compassion and respect.

Thank you to my guest for trusting me with her story.

Season 2 Episode 2 - Community Voices: The San Diego Tank Rampage - A Firsthand Account from California Crime with Amy Jean, a true crime podcast based out of California.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

For many San Diegans, the tank rampage is something they remember from old news footage and newspaper articles. But for today's episode, we're talking with someone who experienced that day in a very different way than most. Our guest today, Ellen, witnessed the tank rampage firsthand. If you haven't done so already, I highly encourage you to listen to our last episode, Rampage and Steel, the Tank Terror of San Diego, where I cover the story of Sean Nelson, who stole a tank from a San Diego military armory and drove it through the city. I'm Amy Jean, and this is California Crime with Amy Jean, Community Voices, Rampage and Steel. Today I'm joined by Ellen. Back in 1995, she was driving on the 163 Michi Saada Tank. Ellen, thank you for being here with us today. Thank you for having me. So, Ellen, what was life like for you then?

SPEAKER_01 1:00

I had just moved to San Diego a few years prior and making new friends, and I was actually on my way from University Heights where I was living at the time, up to the Miramesa area to get together with a group of friends. And um, I was working at the San Diego Airport for an airline and kind of like my dream job in my dream city, and I had come from the Midwest, where things were a lot smaller, quieter. Um, so it was kind of like going to the big city. I mean, not that where I came from was that small, but it was I was living my my best life.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

So that day in 1995, where were you going?

SPEAKER_01 1:44

I was going to visit a group of friends that I had met since moving out here. And so leaving uh my house, I was got on the 163 and headed north, northbound. And I'm driving up the 163, and you get when you get to the top of the hill past Fashion Valley, it's sort of flat. So I could see something way off in the distance. Traffic was normal, uh, but way off in the distance, I could see something, couldn't tell what it was. It just it kind of looked like some flashing lights. And but it was moving really slow, and we were just going normal freeway speeds, but it was really slow. So as I got closer, I could see, oh my gosh, it's cop cars. Oh my gosh, it's a lot of cop cars. And eventually I saw the tank going down the middle of the freeway, southbound, but it was going really slow, it was not going fast. And I just thought, what they I'm I can looked up in the skies like it's gotta be they've got to be shooting a movie or something. This is just weird. Uh it was surreal. But then it got even more surreal when the tank took a turn and headed toward the median. And I realized this guy's coming right at me. And fortunately, as he got over the first, the first part of the tank got over the median, it got stuck. Had it not got stuck, he would have plowed right into me immediately head on. So I'm kind of in shock, thinking, okay, that wasn't a movie. Um, saw people to the right of me pulling over and some guy pulling out his cell phone, probably to down 911. And I must have been in shock. I just kept driving, drove up, got to where my friends were getting together and walked in and basically told them, Whoa, you guys, you'll never guess what I just did. It was just happened to me. And basically, there we everybody was in disbelief. It's like, what you kidding? A tank? What's a tank doing in the middle of the freeway? And so it wasn't until I got home that night and turned on the news that I saw everything that happened. And it's still surreal to this day.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Did you realize it was a military tank when you were on the 163?

SPEAKER_01 4:00

I figured military because that would be the only tank, and I do I did know of the existence of that's where they used to keep them up in the Miramar area. So I recognized what it was and how wrong it was for it to be on the freeway. Oh, definitely. And what was traffic doing? Traffic on the southbound side, there was really basically nothing because, like I said, the track uh the tank was going very slowly. So anybody who was in front of the tank, they are were long past um, you know, driving at normal speed. On the northbound side that I was on, the traffic was just kind of regular. It was, you know, like after dinner time, approximately around dinner time or so. Um so not the the height of rush hour. And I noticed people kind of slowing down around me. So I kind of slowed down with them too. But I was in the fast lane, I recall, because that's why I knew it hit me that I would have been the first thing that he hit if he if he had made it. Um so after we passed that, you know, I was able to look to my left and see like a zillion cop cars. Um, I still was looking for the for the uh helicopters because I still thought this gotta be a movie, it's gotta be a movie. But um it wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

And did you have a chance to see people? Did they look scared? Like the person who got their cell phone? Did they did they look like they were in disbelief? Could you tell?

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Did the person who pulled over to get his cell phone up? That's the only one I remember really looking at. And he looked concerned, and but you know, I just I zoomed back past him pretty quickly. But I think everybody out on that side of the freeway was in shock, like me.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

And then what happened the next day? Were people talking about it?

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Yes. And they were in disbelief when I was telling them my story, too. Um it was just it was really odd. Um, and something I wanted to mention to you too. I grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. If there was an accident on the freeway, it made the evening news. It was like maybe once a week that would happen. And then when I moved out here, it was like every single day. There was always at least one accident or more every day on a whole bunch of different freeways. So that was a huge adjustment for me. And then, of course, to see something like this happen, it's like, well, this would not have happened back in St. Paul.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, it's weird being in a military town and different. Yes, yeah, it's different. Sometimes you'll just see a a train of tanks just going through the city, and that's perfectly normal and not anything to be concerned about. It's weird.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Um so uh just out of curiosity, how long did it feel like people were in shock and how like were they still talking about it for days? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Yes. Um they the news channels played it a lot because they did eventually, like in your podcast, say uh they did eventually pull over and get into the top of the tank and take him out. And we saw that footage over and over and over again. I do not recall which channel of news I was watching back then, but I remember seeing it multiple times throughout the the days afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

And it was national TV as well, and it's so it was a network.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

It was either ABC, NBC, or CBS, I don't remember. But yeah, so I believe everybody, in fact, my family in the Midwest had seen it too, and they were shocked that I had been so close to the situation and so relieved that I was not hurt.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Oh, for sure. Um, after all of these years and going through that, what have you taken from it? Like what ref have you gained reflection on it or um in the long run?

SPEAKER_01 7:54

I'm a believer of if it's meant to be, it's going to happen. And if it's your time, it's your time. It wasn't my time. Um I I'm not living my life any differently. I still drive in the freeway, you know. Um, no, I I didn't really change much, but it just made me appreciate what I have.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Do you have any thoughts about the story itself, Sean Nelson, or do you have personal opinions on him?

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Not really. Not really. Um, my family, my immediate family was not uh none of them were in the military. Uh my brothers went to a military high school, but that was about it. Uh, but I do know a fair amount about PTSD. So I had good resources to talk me through whatever I needed about it. It's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Is there anything else from that day you want to share or anything that you remember?

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Well, it's kind of like Dorothy, you're not in Kansas anymore. It's life in Southern California is totally different from life in the Midwest. Um, and I'm definitely a California girl now that I've been here for so long. But it was just a matter of uh just I remember just being in such disbelief and such shock and really seriously thinking, this has got to be a movie. This is too weird to be real. But it wasn't. It was real.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

It's hard to imagine um what you're describing. It's so it's like so surreal for us. Even researching the story and making an episode and looking at the footage, I just look through footage and footage and footage, and I was listening to so much police radio and trying to get the picture, and a lot of it I can still understand from when I was um a police dispatcher, and you can hear the adrenaline, you can hear the cops were just trying to figure out you know, what are we going to do? Like, how are we going to protect the public? And even with all of that, it's still hard to really imagine driving on the 163 and seeing a tank.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

It was totally surreal. That is the best way I can describe it. Totally surreal, unbelievable. Um not in a ultimatum type of type of way, but just one that you just never would dream up yourself. You know, just like what the heck?

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Just so out of the blue, you can't prepare yourself for it, can't expect it, you can't say if I was in this situation, what would I do? You can't even ask.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

I mean, and the last thing I was expecting was for the tank to hop over the median. You know, I just thought if I was gonna drive past it as I finally figured out what was going on. I had no idea how things would change in a split second.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Yeah, completely unpredictable. And it's interesting, the the cops during their interviews, they talk about how they were expecting him. They thought he was trying to go onto the next part of the freeway.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

He definitely was trying to come over to the other side. I mean, you wouldn't get caught on the medium unless you were trying to get over. Yeah. And in reality, I think it was the shock that the shock that stayed with me, I think it did for quite a while. Because it was just so unbelievably weird.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

It took a lot a long time for it to kind of for you to process it or that did happen.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Well, fortunately everybody wanted to hear about it, so I had to talk about it over and over again. With my family and um all my friends at the airport. They're like, What? What you saw it? Like, saw it. I was probab just inches away from being in it. So grief. Yeah. So yeah. So I had plenty of opportunity to process it, which really, I mean, that's how you deal with things, is you just have to talk about it and figure it out for yourself. True.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Yeah. And I think when you talk about it a lot, it becomes so much of a story that you can kind of step back and look at it and put a little bit of distance there. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

It was like, here's a story. You know, I don't have to remind myself that it was I was the center on my side of the freeway, I was the center of the story. But it it you you look at it through a different light. Yeah, different perspective.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Wow. Did has anything changed? Um, I guess it's just kind of similar to what I asked before, but is it a lot different looking at it now than it was a few months or a couple of years?

SPEAKER_01 12:34

You know, that's the odd thing is when I listened to your podcast, I could feel things rise in my chest. And it in a way it brought me back to that time. It just uh tension, um, anxiety. Those were the things that kind of like, oh my god, you know, I was just reliving it in a way. And sometimes things like that really shock you. I mean, I haven't taught I haven't thought about that probably 30 years. Um, maybe once or twice in between then to somebody, but never at great length. And it's amazing, it's amazing how you can go right back and be right there and and picture yourself looking out the windshield, picture yourself seeing, what WTF is that? And why is this happening? And and where are the helicopters shooting the movie? Was the tape loud? Was it um, you know, because of him coming toward me and me coming toward him, it's not like if if he went past me, I would have heard him, but I I couldn't really I don't recall that staying, that thought staying with me. Uh so I don't think it was real loud. No, but I did drive past it, but by then, you know, all of the police cars had surrounded the tank because it was stuck and I just kept going, which I think was a smart thing for me to do. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Yeah. It was almost like the shot kind of protected you so you could figure out how to pass it.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

To the best of my knowledge, I drove just fine, but it's a good thing that I was pretty close to where I was going. And it was a really good thing that I would got to go and sit down and talk about it with people right away. Uh, who didn't want to believe me, but they did.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Yeah, I I couldn't imagine what they were thinking either, though, to have a friend. Well, I know one of them said, Ellen, all these weird things always seem to happen to you.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

So, yeah, okay. So they do sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

That's how my grandmother was. She would have these, she was the calmest person. She never did anything crazy in her life. She didn't go clubbing late at night or was out late, you know, past 8 p.m. And she would the weirdest things would happen to her at the grocery store in broad daylight, you know, something that would involve cops or a scandal or the news. And you're like, what?

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Chaos knows no target. Go anywhere. So that's that's my story.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Well, thank you so much, Ellen, for coming and sharing your story. And I think it's really important for people to hear that, you know, this wasn't just a headline. This was it affected people.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yeah. I mean, you did a good job of covering how it affected the the professionals that had to deal with the situation. But there's in every big tragedy like this, there's gotta be bystanders that either witnessed it or were participants or unwilling participants. And fortunately, I was not an unwilling participant. I was just a passing by.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Yeah, there's a ripple effect. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

But it the ripple effect carried on into I wouldn't call this PTSD. I would just say vivid memories. Vivid memories that brought bring anxiety when I think about it. But I don't think about it very much. I don't need to until you dragged it up.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Well, I do I do think sharing stories with one another is a good thing too. Definitely to have, you know, as a community, we can be there for each other and and to share these stories and these things just happen. Weird things sometimes just happen. Right. And it's okay to talk about it and share it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

I mean, and you know, you have empathy for whatever this person was going through.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah. Um this was a hard case to cover and to research because there was empathy, and I it's always a challenge to have empathy for someone who may have hurt someone. I mean, he was rolling over cars and there could have been people inside. Yes. He could have accidentally crashed into someone's house, and he may have accidentally hurt someone, even if it wasn't intentional. So it some of the story, the compassion kind of goes away. Um, but you still it just seems like there was a chance where he could have gotten the help that he needed if it was available to him and maybe well thirty years ago, maybe it wasn't as easily accessible as it is today.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Oh, for sure. And then there's always the fact that a lot of people don't think that they're sick. They don't admit that they're sick, uh, they refuse help. Yeah. They think they like it better the way that they are. It's beyond my knowledge, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how would we really ever know if if it things could have been different with him? But you can't go there. No. Yeah. You can't play whatever.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

You drive yourself nuts.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

True. Well, thank you, Ellen. I think this story's important. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

It's been interesting, re-living it.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Thank you so much for listening and for being part of the community here today. Hearing Ellen's story is a humbling reminder that these cases aren't lore. They aren't stories that began as documentaries, books, or podcast episodes. They were real events experienced by real people, unfolding in real time. For the people who live through them, they were surprising, surreal, frightening, and unpredictable. No one knew how the story would end because it wasn't history yet. One of the goals of California Crime with Amy Teen is to remember that crime doesn't just affect victims and offenders, it ripples through families, neighborhoods, first responders, witnesses, and entire communities. Today's guest reminded us of that in a powerful way. If you have a personal story, perspective, memory, or opinion about any of the cases featured on California Crime with Amy Jean, I would love to hear from you. You can reach out through Instagram, Facebook, YouTube comments, the fan mail link in the show notes, or by emailing cc with AmyGene at gmail.com. Your story may help us better understand a moment in California history. Until next time, thank you for listening and thank you for helping keep these stories human. Stay safe and take care of you.