Man accused of using stolen bulldozer in Seattle park

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For Melissa Koenig

A Seattle man was arrested for allegedly using a stolen bulldozer to demolish part of a public park while claiming he had permission to build a cabin.

Steven Irwin, 41, was arrested after multiple 911 calls about the destruction at Dr. Jose Rizal Park Saturday afternoon, the Seattle Police Department confirmed to The Post.

“I just found it on my way home,” park administrator Genevieve Courtney told Fox 13 of seeing the huge piece of machinery rolling down the sidewalk.

“I was going a little crazy with this piece of heavy machinery,” he said.

Courtney said she eventually called 911 six times and “didn’t feel like I was being taken seriously.”

“They were like, ‘Does he have a gun?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, he’s got a backhoe. That’s a weapon,'” he told Fox 13.

“It’s scary to see someone with a big bulldozer driving through the park, and it could have been a much worse situation,” he told KOMO.

When police responded, they found Irwin still inside the machinery, which is believed to have been stolen from a nearby construction site, according to reports.

He was filmed being led by police out of a ditch and arrested.

“He complied,” Andrea Suarez of the community cleanup group “We Heart Seattle” told Fox 13. “But he told the police he had permission to be here and set up camp.”

Irwin was charged with theft of a motor vehicle and booked into the King County Jail, Seattle police confirmed to The Post.

Photos of the aftermath show fallen trees and tire tracks on the ground.

Park Steward Craig Thompson complained that it wasted “hundreds of hours of volunteer work” that had helped beautify the area.

“What we saw here today is a person who decided to undo all that work for the sake of whatever reason they had in their irrational mind,” Thompson said.

Suarez, the executive director of We Heart Seattle, also said the situation should serve as a wake-up call to local leaders in the crime-ridden city.

“For someone to have the nerve to take a piece of equipment of that value and destroy our urban forest makes you question everything,” he said.

“Why are we here in the first place? Why has Seattle turned into a playground with no rules?”

He added in a Facebook post that repairs to the park will likely take decades and claimed that propane tanks, chainsaws, five pounds of weed, methamphetamine and a dozen stolen credit cards were recovered from his makeshift camp.

“It is important to note that it took several police calls and a long response time for our police department to arrive because other priorities, including two shootings in South Seattle, had tied them up,” Suarez wrote, noting that the city has dropped 700. official since 2019.

“We need to elect a city council that will politically and financially support the funding of a fully staffed agency,” he urged.