Glendale Police Arrest Man After Joy Ride in Humvee

It was certainly an unusual sight--a man in civilian clothes tooling about town in a military transport vehicle with its lights out at 1 in the morning.

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And the driver wore this bright orange- and green-striped cap.

“Maybe that was the first clue,” police spokesman Rodney Brooks said.

Then, when a police officer who stopped him asked where he got the Humvee, an unarmed, Jeep-style vehicle used in the Persian Gulf War, the driver said President Clinton gave it to him.

That was the second clue.

Ener Arcilla Henson was in jail Wednesday and the Humvee police say he took from the Glendale National Guard Armory was returned.

Authorities believe that Tuesday night or early Wednesday, Henson slipped through a gate left open by people working the graveyard shift at the armory on Colorado Boulevard and made his way to the Humvee, which was in a lot outside the main building. Henson, 34, somehow cut the chain holding the steering wheel in place, hopped in and drove off, Brooks said.

A police officer with a military background stopped Henson on Rock Glen Avenue a couple of miles from the armory, Brooks said, because he recognized the vehicle and was not aware of any maneuvers in the area.

Henson said he was heading to his brother’s, Brooks said.

Henson is “unemployed. Creative, but uneployed,” Brooks said.

“Nobody was hurt,” Brooks said. “Just his pride.”

Maj. Kevin Sandri, spokesman for the California National Guard, said this was the first theft from the Glendale armory, adding that there are infrequent robberies at other National Guard facilities. “We have occasional break-ins, just like any other corporation,” he said.

“All the good stuff is under severe lock and key,” Sandri said. “They wouldn’t be able to get it.”

Although Humvees can be equipped with modules to hold such items as machine guns, the stolen vehicle had no such items, Sandri said.

Jeff Schnaufer is a Times correspondent and Nicholas Riccardi is a staff writer.