This from one of the several film reviews about the film "Cul De Sac: A Suburban War Story". It provides a profile of Shawn Nelson, the guy who stole the tank. It also takes us a bit off-topic.
"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.
"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."
Alex