The M60 Patton tank, over 55 tons of armor-reinforced American firepower,
meant to go head to head with Soviet tanks in a winner-take-all battle for Europe.
Yet years after the end of the Cold War, a Patton tank would wage a different type of battle,
as a deranged man takes an American tank on a rampage
through San Diego reminiscent of something out of Grand Theft Auto.
It's 6:30 pm on May 17th, 1995, and former US Army tank driver Shawn Nelson drives his Chevrolet to
the California Army National Guard Armory on Mesa College Boulevard, directly outside of a
neighborhood of San Diego. The tanks of the California National Guard are kept in
a constant state of readiness, prepared to deploy on a moments notice to any battlefield across the
Pacific- or to meet any invader of the US homeland attempting to land on the California coast.
Nelson knows the M60 well, having driven one for two years during his military service from 1978
to 1980. Stationed in Germany, Nelson was part of the American advance forces meant to go toe-to-toe
with the Warsaw Pact and hold the line until reinforcements from the homeland could arrive
in Europe. The Patton was well suited to the task, weighing in at 57 tons when combat-loaded and with
armor up to ten inches thick in places. If there was any tank that could enter, and survive,
the slugfest that would have been World War III in Europe, it was the Patton.
By the time that Nelson snuck into that California National Guard armory though,
the M60's glory days were long over, having been replaced by the much more advanced M1 Abrams.
All existing M60s were slowly phased out and scrapped, sold to foreign countries,
or handed down to the national guard units of various states. Thankfully for all,
no M1 Abrams was available that fateful day, or this tank rampage may have been truly unstoppable.
Due to crews working late, the gate to the motor pool holding several M60s was left wide open,
and yet no one was around as Nelson parked his car and then jogged over to the waiting tanks.
Trying one, and then a second, Nelson was unable to start the vehicles- but then he got
lucky on the third one and the 55 ton Patton roared to life.
Normally the tank requires a crew of 4 to operate, and thankfully the ammunition for
either the main gun or the machine guns on the tank was not loaded and kept in a separate,
locked building. As a one man crew though, Nelson could still drive the vehicle,
and he'd need no guns to cause untold devastation across an unsuspecting San Diego.
By now though a national guardsman has noticed Nelson, and wisely decides that instead of
trying to stop him alone, he'd call the police. The operator on the other end is incredulous,
who would have ever thought that a man would steal a tank from the national guard-
this was after all a time before Grand Theft Auto. With police notified though,
cruisers were immediately dispatched in Nelson's direction.
Moving at 30 miles an hour, the tank heads into the San Diego suburbs,
the giant rumbling machine upsetting the peace and quiet of sleepy neighborhoods.
The astonished civilians are incredulous as the massive tank
ramps up onto a parked vehicle and crushes the automobile flat, without losing an ounce
of acceleration. The tank keeps going, ramping up on a whole row of parked cars,
pancaking every single one of them and leaving nothing but flattened glass and steel in its wake.
By now the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, the California Highway Patrol,
and military police are all pursuing Nelson in his tank,
but all of them have one question in mind: how in the world do we stop a vehicle designed to
operate on a nuclear battlefield?! While law enforcement digs for an answer, they also
begin looking into Nelson's past in an attempt to find a way to stop the rampaging madman.
Even during his two years of service with the US Army in 1978-1980,
Nelson faced multiple disciplinary problems, though none of which prevented him from being
honorably discharged at the completion of his two year service contract.
Shortly after returning to the US, Nelson started a plumbing business and became quite successful,
settling down with his girlfriend, Suzy Hellman. Eventually the two were married,
and all seemed well for the happy couple- but dark times were ahead.
In 1988, Nelson's mother died, and four years later his father would die as well.
At around the time of his mother's death,
the grieving Nelson began to experiment with drugs and alcohol, settling on methamphetamine
as his drug of choice. The normally helpful and happy Nelson began a slow,
dark descent into drug addiction and depression, his life falling apart before his eyes.
In 1990 Nelson was involved in a motorcycle accident that left him with serious back
and neck injuries. By now, Nelson's drug addiction was severely affecting his behavior,
and he attempted to walk out of the hospital claiming he was not
being treated properly. He went on to file a malpractice suit that was thrown out of court,
though Nelson was forced to repay the over $6,000 bill his hospital stay had cost him.
In pain, Nelson's abuse of alcohol and methamphetamine only grew worse,
and his wife finally divorced him. With his business floundering due to his erratic behavior,
the final nail in the coffin for his professional life as a plumber came when his van and all
his tools were stolen. Then, shortly after his new girlfriend left him due to his drug usage.
Nelson's methamphetamine abuse began to spiral even more out of control,
and friends were shocked to discover he had dug a seventeen foot shaft in his backyard.
Nelson claimed that he was digging for gold, and even filed a claim with the county office stating
his intention to mine the bedrock. Nothing ever came out of that hole except for dirt.
By now the bank was beginning foreclosure hearings on his home, and Nelson's behavior was spiraling
more and more out of control. Watching the footage from the Oklahoma City bombings on tv one day,
he remarked to his friend, “Oklahoma was good stuff”. This would prove to be an ominous warning
of things to come, but nobody took Shawn Nelson's off-the-cuff comment seriously.
Now, San Diego was suffering the wrath of Shawn Nelson's tank rampage.
He drove his tank straight through an intersection, aiming straight for an
old woman's house. The woman watched frozen in shock as the tank came straight towards her,
the one-floor house having no chance of stopping the rampaging machine. Nelson however seemed to
change his mind, and stopped the vehicle, backing it up and driving it back on the road. He swiped a
minivan with a mother and her teenage daughter though, destroying the motor and miraculously
leaving the woman and her daughter unharmed. A few minutes later, Nelson drove his tank straight
through a traffic light, toppling it and causing it to get stuck on the turret of the vehicle.
Now, the methamphetamine fueled madman turned his sights on the freeway,
where thousands of motorists would be unable to escape his rampage.
The police meanwhile were helpless to stop Nelson and his tank,
police cruisers forced to follow the tank at a distance, with other cruisers leading the way up
front and hoping to clear the way of people with their flashing lights and loud sirens. Dumbstruck
bystanders watched the mighty war machine rumble by, thinking perhaps a movie was being filmed-
until the tank would obliterate parked vehicles in its path. This was no movie, it was real life,
and though nobody had been hurt or killed yet, if that tank got on the freeway the casualties
could be immense- especially if it caught up with rush hour traffic trapped in a standstill.
The tank climbed an on-ramp, the police cruisers still on its tail. Luckily the freeway was
relatively free of traffic along this stretch of San Diego, but closer to downtown was rush hour
traffic, practically caught in a standstill. If Nelson reached them, drivers would be trapped in
their vehicles as the giant tank simply rolled straight over them and crushed them to death.
Vehicles managed to easily avoid the giant tank, moving at only thirty miles per hour,
and Nelson was growing frustrated. He had no plan or agenda, merely to
cause as much mayhem as possible before the tank's fuel ran out.
But here on the freeway he couldn't catch up to the flow of traffic quickly enough,
and then he decided on a plan. Nelson would smash through the concrete divider of the freeway to
continue his rampage on the other side, where the speeding vehicles would be coming straight at him.
With a lurch, the 55 ton tank rumbled towards the concrete divider, smashing it to pieces as its
front collided with the rebar-reinforced concrete. This divider was designed to withstand the force
of a tractor-trailer going sixty miles per hour, but it shattered on contact with the steel war
machine. Incredibly though, the shattered concrete managed to wedge the tank's treads in an awkward
position, momentarily stopping the lumbering behemoth. Unable to gain traction, the tank
struggled to continue its movement, and Nelson began jerking it back and forth trying to free it.
If he got free, nothing the police could do would be able to stop the tank from
threatening oncoming traffic. With drivers completely unaware of what was ahead of them,
they would be running straight at the steel war machine at fifty or sixty miles an hour,
only to be immediately flattened and crushed to death. A call had already
been placed with a local Marine reserve unit for a Cobra attack helicopter,
but it would take time for the chopper, which was kept in storage and not ready for operations,
to be fueled, prepped for flight, and armed with an air-launched tank killer missile.
With the tank stuck, four police officers knew that if they were going
to save countless lives, they needed to act now.
Four police officers rushed out of their own vehicles and bravely climbed atop the
bucking and heaving war machine. One slip or one jerk of the big machine would see them
hurled from the tank and crushed to death. Still, the officers continued their climb,
and luckily for all involved one of them- Marine Corp reservist Gunnery Sergeant
Paul Patton, was a fellow tanker and knew how to open the vehicle's hatch.
Aiming his weapon down into the tank, Patton ordered Nelson to shut off the
machine and climb out, but Nelson ignored him and continued to gun the engine. The
tank was nearly free, there was little time to act- and so Patton fired once,
hitting Nelson in the shoulder from a downward trajectory. The bullet pierced
into Nelson's chest cavity and caused massive bleeding- but the tank was at last silent.
The four officers immediately pulled Nelson out of the tank and began first aid. Luckily an ambulance
had been following the rampage closely, ready to respond to any wounded by Nelson's erratic
tank driving. Within minutes Nelson was placed in an ambulance and rushed to a nearby hospital,
where lifesaving surgery was attempted. Ultimately, Nelson would die of his injury,
and while the police were criticized for not using other means to subdue Nelson,
most people agree that there was no realistic option for stopping Nelson's rampage that
wouldn't have further endangered lives. If he had managed to get the tank unstuck,
Nelson could've wreaked havoc in oncoming traffic, killing who knows how many people.
In the years since his death Nelson was glorified as a folk hero of sorts,
taking out his frustration at a broken system on the society that let him down.
However, Nelson's own brother and former wife both have said that Nelson was not a
hero with an agenda, he was simply an out of control drug addict and nothing more.
Now watch our video on another deranged madman, Killdozer, or click this other video instead!