Two U.S. Forest Service employees held at gunpoint for more than 12 hours in a remote area of Northern California were released unharmed early Friday morning, officials said. Two suspects, a father and adult son, were arrested about 40 minutes after the workers were freed.
The employees were kidnapped sometime before 11 a.m. Thursday while conducting routine field work in the Shasta Trinity National Forest. U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said the workers were not on patrol and had simply been doing their jobs when they were taken. Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue said deputies received a call from Forest Service officials that one of the suspects, 49-year-old Joseph Charles Henrichsen, had told authorities that the two employees were zip-tied and being held at gunpoint inside a rural trailer near the small city of Mount Shasta, located about 50 miles south of the Oregon-California border.
"Mr. Henrichsen indicated that he had firearms, ammunition, and wanted to speak with the FBI," LaRue said.
Multiple local and federal agencies responded. Using drones, authorities located the trailer where the workers were being held. SWAT teams, hostage negotiators, a bomb squad, and snipers were all dispatched to the scene. It took until a little after 4 p.m. Thursday before direct negotiations with Henrichsen and his son, Phoenix Henrichsen, could begin. The two workers were finally released just before 2 a.m. Friday. They were not seriously hurt.
When the suspects surrendered roughly 40 minutes later, Brian Tosch, acting special agent in charge for the FBI's Sacramento field office, said that at the time of their surrender, Charles Henrichsen "had an AR-15 and knives, and claimed to have grenades." Investigators said they had not yet confirmed a motive.
The terrain made the operation especially difficult. Shasta County Sheriff Michael Johnson described the area as remote and hard to reach. "I've got to tell you folks, this is remote Northern California, out in a rural area where it's tough to get resources in and out, it's a small one-lane road," Johnson said. "It is rough terrain and different than handling an incident within a city or urban environment."
The two suspects face federal charges of kidnapping a federal employee, according to Eric Grant, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California. Officials said they could not confirm whether the suspects owned or lived in the trailer where the victims were held.
