2 Forest Service employees rescued after kidnapping at gunpoint in California

17 Jul 2026, 18:00 by Andrew Graham · The Seattle Times

Two U.S. Forest Service employees are alive and free after being held for hours at gunpoint in a trailer at a remote lake in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

The two employees were conducting fieldwork when they were kidnapped and ultimately zip-tied, Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue said at a news conference in Redding on Friday morning. A U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officer contacted his agency at 10:55 a.m. on July 16, LaRue said, with a report that a man, who was later found to be in the trailer with his son, had taken the two employees hostage and wanted to speak to the FBI.

The trailer was near Gumboot Lake, a remote alpine lake in the national forest. Sheriff’s deputies reached the area around noon and launched drones to look for the trailer, locating it at around 1:03 p.m., LaRue said. Other agencies, state, local and federal, also sent officers rushing toward the area.

“It was a large incident,” LaRue said.

Officials started communicating with the man not long after that, but it was not until around 4:20 p.m. that they began to negotiate with him, LaRue said. Hours later and well into the night, at around 1:50 a.m., the man released his two hostages, LaRue said. At 2:30 a.m., the man, who authorities identified as Joseph Charles Henrichsen, and his son exited the trailer. Henrichsen is 49, officials said, and his son is an adult, but they did not provide his age.

Both men were being charged with kidnapping a federal employee, U.S. District Attorney for the Eastern District of California Eric Grant said at the news conference. The Forest Service employees are recovering with their families, LaRue said. Authorities continued to investigate the men’s motivation, Grant said.