TEXAS — The recent issue of unidentified drones hovering over American skies was solved suddenly today after the drones attempted to fly over Texas.
Within seconds of the drones entering the Lone Star State, the sound of heavy gunfire split the air as Texans pumped thousands of rounds of ammunition into the sky.
“Yee-haw!” shouted local man Dean Billings, grinning as he blasted drones with his neighbor. “Been waiting for this day to come forever. Feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven. Oh man, here comes some more, Bill!
Jasper lives in the southern part of the Oregon Coast Range of mountains that runs along Oregon’s Pacific Coast and is home to a healthy herd of elk. Jasper grew up on and now owns his family’s rural farm in those mountains.
Having lived in the area all his life, Jasper is very familiar with all the forest service and logging roads that crisscross the various public and private lands above the valley floor. As both a farmer, who managed his own time as he saw fit, and as an avid hunter, he invested many hours, day after day, year after year, scouting those peaks, watching the movement of the elk, trying to anticipate where they would be during hunting season. His time investment paid off, as Jasper always bagged an elk each year.
Jasper believed in using every advantage he could get. As such and having earned his stripes as a big game hunter long before the advent of many of the current magnum cartridges capable of dropping a 900 lb. bull elk, Jasper shot a 300 H&H Magnum. Shooting “digger squirrels” every summer to maintain his proficiency, his marksmanship skills were practiced and sharpened regularly. He didn’t want to miss the chance on a trophy bull, regardless of the range.
One year while hunting with his son, Junior, they glassed a ridgeline about 500 yards across the valley from the logging road where their truck was parked. They spotted several cow elk moving down the hillside followed by a nice bull. As they watched the small herd moved down the grassy slope and into a thick growth of spruce trees, where the herd vanished. No more movement. Nothing exited that stand of trees.
After watching for a few minutes, expecting some movement but seeing nothing, the men drew up a plan. Jasper would move down the hillside in one direction to get closer to where the herd disappeared. Jasper’s son would set off in the opposite direction to try to better identify the exact location of the herd.
Just as Jasper reached his intended location, a nice bull stood up. Without hesitation, Jasper shot the bull, saw the bullet strike, and watched the bull go down. But less than 20 seconds later, Jasper watched that bull stand back up. Somewhat concerned that the shot didn’t anchor the animal as solidly as he thought, he fired again. Again, he watched the animal fall…and after a moment, he stood up a second time.
Jasper couldn’t believe his eyes. He knew he landed two solid hits in the vitals of the bull, but there he stood. Unable to dispute the fact that the animal was standing there, and not wanting to prolong the animal’s suffering, he shot a third time, and for a third time, watched the bull fall.
This time he stayed down.
Meanwhile, Junior tried moving quietly through the thick scrub and brambles towards where he and his dad last saw the herd. Suddenly, Junior heard his father’s first shot. Knowing his dad’s well-earned reputation as a marksman, he thought “dead bull” and mentally prepared himself for the chore of packing out the meat. Hearing the second shot somewhat surprised him. Could his old man be losing his touch? He never needs a second shot.
When Junior heard the third shot, full-on confusion set in. For a moment he wondered if the elk were shooting back.
Jasper began climbing down the hillside and across the valley to the opposite ridge, excited to see this resilient bull and running through the check-list for the hours of work ahead to dress, quarter, and pack the animal back to his truck.
Jasper arrived at the location about the same time as Junior, and discovered that Jasper had not shot one, but three elk bulls, all lying dead beside each other. They never saw the other bulls trailing the herd of cows while glassing earlier.
Not quite sure where he stood legally but knowing that he had not intentionally broken the law, Jasper was pretty sure that a game warden would have a hard time believing his story—hell, he could hardly believe it himself. Jasper and Junior used their tags, as well as his wife’s tag, for each animal killed and the family’s freezer was full of meat for quite a while afterwards.
The details were kept from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, but the story is repeated often amongst family and friends.
Tanks are just cool. Tearing about the desert in one of these bad boys is a feeling of power like no other.
In what seems a familiar refrain, Shawn Timothy Nelson never was quite right. Born on 21 August 1959, Shawn was the second of Fred and Betty Nelson’s three boys. He attended James Madison High School in San Diego.
This is Shawn Nelson. Sadly, he seemed to come from the factory broken.
In 1978, Shawn enlisted in the US Army. After his training was complete, he was posted to Germany as an armor crewman. Two years later he separated from the military with an honorable discharge for “multifaceted disciplinary problems.”
The vast majority of the junior soldiers with whom I served were solid, hard-charging young studs. They were drawn to military service out of a desire to give back, a lust for adventure, or a need to earn money for college. However, a few of them just weren’t wired correctly. Shawn Nelson seems to have fallen into that category.
For a time, Shawn Nelson’s life looked like it might turn out OK. However, eventually, everything just kind of fell apart.
Once he left the military, Shawn trained to become a plumber. After he married Suzy Hellman in 1984, Shawn started his own plumbing business. By all accounts he was fairly successful. At some point everybody needs a plumber.
An Interesting Piece of Humanity
Shawn knew how to exercise the US legal system. He got into a fight with a hospital security guard in 1990 and subsequently sued the hospital. His mom died at the same hospital the following year, and he sued them again for that. In 1993 all of his cumulative legal assaults were consolidated and promptly dismissed. This experience left him bitter and angry.
Shawn and his wife actually lived in Clairemont, California, a subordinate community within San Diego proper. His weird behavior earned him no small amount of local notoriety. Nelson frequently cut his grass in the middle of the night, and he eventually excavated a twenty-foot hole in his backyard searching for gold. By all accounts his efforts bore no fruit. His property was cluttered with mechanical detritus and refuse.
The cops responded to his home nine times in 1994-1995. These calls ranged from allegations of domestic violence to a claim that his work van had been stolen. Throughout it all, his neighbors knew of him but no one actually knew him.
Shawn Nelson also struggled with addiction. He mixed alcohol and methamphetamines regularly, causing his behavior to become more and more erratic. In 1991 Suzy moved out.
In the end, Shawn Nelson was just dealt a bad hand. How he responded to his spate of ill luck, however, was unconventional to say the least.
In June of 1994, someone stole Nelson’s van with all his plumbing tools. Now deprived of the means to do his job, his business cratered. Along the way, he had a motorcycle accident and suffered a painful spinal injury. By 1995 he was unemployed.
Now unable to pay his bills, the bank foreclosed on his house and the utility companies cut him off. He was finally served with an eviction notice. By this time he had found a new girlfriend, but she saw the writing on the wall and left as well. Nelson began alluding to suicide. The man was clearly at the end of his rope.
I’ve been down on my luck before–most all of us have–though I cannot say I have ever sunk quite as low as Shawn Nelson did. Of course, I never dug a twenty-foot hole in my backyard looking for gold, either. In response to such sordid circumstances, some turn to God, while others might seek out government assistance. By contrast, Shawn Timothy Nelson just went insane.
The Army National Guard
The Army National Guard answers to the Governors of the individual states. In times of crisis, these citizen soldiers can be activated to deal with civil unrest or national disasters. Upon the orders of the President, they can be federalized for national service as well. The National Guard makes up 14.8% of America’s total military force.
The Army National Guard sports some pretty cool toys nowadays.
Back when I was young and dinosaurs roamed the plains, the National Guard was legit one weekend a month and two weeks each summer. It was a great way to make money for college without much risk of deploying someplace to get shot. Not so anymore. After 9/11 we got our money’s worth out of those guys. A good friend with whom I was commissioned commanded in combat at the company, battalion, and brigade levels as a National Guard officer. As you might imagine, he has an exceptionally long-suffering wife.
The National Guard typically trains on the same gear to the same technical standards as their active duty counterparts. Sometimes that works out better than other times, but Guard guys can indeed do some pretty high-speed stuff. In many cases, local National Guard armories will maintain small numbers of combat vehicles onsite for training purposes. I also suppose they could roll out the local Bradley or M1 Abrams in response to civil unrest or something similarly horrible, though I have never heard of that actually happening.
The Mississippi Army National Guard rivals the land armies of many modest nation-states.
In my home state of Mississippi, our National Guard includes Armor, Artillery, Aviation, Engineers, Maintenance, Quartermaster, JAG, and Special Forces units. We even have an Army band. That’s a whole lot of heavily armed rednecks. Don’t screw with us. I’m not kidding.
The Crime Involved a Tank
Nothing takes it to the next level like a 57-ton Main Battle Tank.
Shawn Nelson’s local National Guard armory housed an armor unit. Contained therein were several M60A3 Main Battle Tanks. The local motor pool was surrounded by an eight-foot chain-link fence topped with triple-strand barbed wire. Permanent party personnel typically went home around 1800 hours. They diligently locked the gate behind them as they left.
17 May 1995 was a Wednesday, and the Guard guys were working late for some reason. At 1830 Shawn Nelson drove his derelict van through the open gate and parked near the tanks. Shirtless and ill-kempt, he broke the locks securing three different tanks before he got one to start. By 1845, however, it was game on.
Now here’s something you don’t see every day. The cops were helpless to stop Shawn Nelson once he got his stolen tank spooled up.
Nelson was an experienced tank driver. He crashed the gate with the turret traversed backward and the gun secured in the travel lock. For the next 25 minutes, he wreaked utter chaos in and around San Diego.
One resident later stated, “He didn’t go down the center of the street…It seems he just wanted to get the utilities and cause as much damage (as possible) without hurting people.”
Over the course of some six miles, he took out traffic lights, power poles, fire hydrants, and bus stops. In so doing he cut power to 5,100 households. Along the way, he also crushed forty vehicles including at least one motor home. Throughout it all, miraculously, no one was injured.
The Weapon Was a Tank
The M60 Patton was quite a capable machine in its day.This is the M85 .50-caliber machine gun. In trying to shorten the action so it would fit inside the commander’s cupola designers kind of ruined the gun. It was not popular with the tankers with whom I served.
The M60A3 Patton was 31 feet long and could reach speeds of 45 miles per hour. The tank was powered by a Continental AVDS-1790-2 V12 air-cooled, twin-turbo diesel engine. It was armed with a superb 105mm M68 main gun along with a 7.62x51mm M73 coaxial gun and an M85 .50-caliber machine gun in the commander’s cupola, both of which kind of sucked. More than 15,000 of these vehicles were produced.
This is an early M60 with the optical range finder. The lenses are mounted in those armored bulges on the sides of the turret.
Like all military weapon systems, the machine evolved over time. The M60A1 was equipped with an M17A1 optical rangefinder that used a pair of lenses set on the sides of the turret to accurately determine range. This binocular periscope device rode in the two bug-eyed knobs on the exterior of the turret. With these two lenses focused on a target it became a simple mechanical exercise in geometry to determine the range. The later M60A3 included a laser rangefinder. I worked alongside M60 tanks early in my military career and found them to be more than adequately intimidating.
Nothing Lasts Forever
There’s just nothing in the arsenal of the San Diego Police Department that is going to put a dent in one of these.
The authorities were in a bit of a quandary. Though bereft of ammunition, this was still a 114,000-pound armored vehicle. The cops didn’t have anything that would touch it. The Governor supposedly considered requesting armed tank or attack helicopter support. In the end, Shawn Nelson took care of the problem himself.
In his enthusiasm to crush pretty much everything in sight, Nelson ran his pilfered tank up onto a concrete traffic barrier, wedging it in place. While trying to extricate himself he threw a track. Now the tank was immobilized.
It’s pretty tough to get into one of these monsters if the guys inside don’t want you to.
The tank was in combat lockdown with the sundry hatches secured. Four extraordinarily brave San Diego PD officers mounted the thrashing vehicle and managed to get the commander’s hatch open using bolt cutters. Throughout it all Nelson tried to throw the officers clear by violently working the remaining track.
The cops had no idea whether or not Nelson was armed. Once they finally got the hatch opened they shot him in the right shoulder. He died on site. The coroner later reported that he had been intoxicated at the time. Here’s a video of the final moments.
The Aftermath for Shawn Nelson
This was still freaking California, so naturally folks took issue with the way the cops ended Nelson’s rampage. Only in the Land of Fruits and Nuts would four cops be brave enough to leap onto a rampaging tank and then have citizens complain that they did it wrong. The lawyers naturally got involved, and the State of California was forced to pay out $149,201 (about $273,000 today) to cover damages. Wow.
This is Fort Irwin, California, home of the National Training Center. If misery was a mineral you mined out of the ground here is where you’d go to find it. I hate this place.
The following day all 28 tanks in Southern California Guard armories had their batteries removed for safekeeping. Those suckers are heavy. I suspect that was a fairly unpopular play among the tankers tasked with carrying out this edict.
Because it was still California, all California National Guard tanks were eventually moved to Fort Irwin and Camp Roberts for safekeeping. I’m honestly surprised they didn’t just pass some fresh new tank control laws to guarantee that the Shawn Nelsons of the world could no longer steal tanks. Freaking California…
TEXAS — The recent issue of unidentified drones hovering over American skies was solved suddenly today after the drones attempted to fly over Texas.
Jasper lives in the southern part of the Oregon Coast Range of mountains that runs along Oregon’s Pacific Coast and is home to a healthy herd of elk. Jasper grew up on and now owns his family’s rural farm in those mountains.
