California Forest Service workers taken hostage, held at gunpoint in remote trailer, feds say
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Two U.S. Forest Service employees working in a remote area of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest were kidnapped, zip-tied and held inside a trailer for more than 17 hours before being rescued Friday morning, authorities said.
The bizarre hostage crisis unfolded like a scene from a movie.
Law enforcement teams from across Northern California, and even as far away as Virginia, converged Thursday on the trailer at the end of a small one-lane road, where a father and son held the workers at gunpoint, according to FBI Sacramento acting Special Agent in Charge Brian Tosh.
For the record:
9:24 a.m. July 18, 2026An earlier version of this article misspelled the last names of the two men accused of taking U.S. Forest Service workers hostage. Their names are Joseph Charles Henrichsen and Phoenix Henrichsen.
The father, identified as 49-year-old Joseph Charles Henrichsen, told authorities he was armed with an automatic rifle and grenades and wanted to talk to the FBI, according to Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue.
The atmosphere was tense, as crisis negotiations continued until early Friday morning when the two employees were safely surrendered, and Henrichsen and his adult son, Phoenix, were taken into custody, LaRue said.
They have both been charged with kidnapping federal employees, according to Eric Grant, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California.
The workers, deeply rattled but physically unharmed, have been returned to their families. Their names have not been released.
“I want to say how profoundly grateful and relieved that we are that our two employees were released safely,” said Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz. “We’re staying close to them and their loved ones, making sure they have the support and the space that they need after what they’ve been through.”
The employees were completing routine field work near the picturesque waters of Gumboot Lake when things took a terrifying turn.
At 8 a.m., the Forest Service received word that the two employees had been kidnapped, Schultz said.
The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office was notified of the hostage crisis shortly before 11 a.m. and deployed drones to scout the area where the workers were taken, LaRue said. Deputies located the trailer around 1 p.m. and began negotiating with the elder Henrichsen for their release around 4 p.m.
The Shasta County Sheriff’s Office deployed a SWAT team, sniper unit, hostage negotiators and a bomb unit to the trailer at a Gumboot Lake campsite. The FBI also sent its own crisis negotiators and even flew in an elite hostage rescue team from Quantico, Va.
Further assistance was provided by personnel from the Forest Service, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, California Highway Patrol, California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and Homeland Security Investigations.
The massive local, state and federal collaboration paid off. At 1:50 a.m. Friday, the two hostages were released, and at 2:30 a.m. the Henrichsens exited the trailer.
Authorities did not publicly disclose the kidnapping or hostage situation until Friday afternoon, after both employees had been rescued.
“Crisis situations like this don’t often result in everyone leaving the scene safely,” Tosh said. “We are very proud of the work everyone did today.”
Authorities are still working to understand the motivation for the kidnapping. LaRue said that Henrichsen did not have a history of involvement with his office.
Henrichsen has a criminal history that includes arrests in Oregon and California, according to the Sacramento Bee. His son, Phoenix, attended Bellingham High School from 2019 to 2021, according to a LinkedIn page with his same name.
In 2022, a man with the same name and age as Henrichsen faced charges accusing him of a hate crime against a Whatcom County, Wash. neighbor whose landlords were of Russian and Ukrainian descent.
According to the Bellingham Herald, the elder Henrichsen was accused of throwing fireworks at the property and leaving homemade handcuffs and an obscene drawing on a note that read “Assassinate Vlad Putin.” A psychologist determined that Henrichsen was not competent to stand trial, but was unable to determine what caused his erratic behavior.
He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for 45 days, according to court records. Later that year, after months of waiting in jail for a hospital bed, a judge dismissed his case without prejudice, allowing prosecutors to refile once he regained competency, the Bellingham Herald reported.
The FBI is asking anyone with information on the father and son to call (800) 225-5324 or visit tips.fbi.gov.
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