A 65-year-old man faces up to five years in prison after federal officers arrested him June 25 for allegedly living illegally in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest for about eight years, court filings show.
Mark Aaron Gatz told authorities he had lived in the forest for roughly eight years and at that specific site for about two, according to a Forest Service citation filed June 29 in Arizona federal court and first reported by The Independent.
Officers found about 1,000 pounds of trash — tires, cans, plastic bags — along with a canopy rigged as a carport and a fireplace with active embers, the citation states.
“I was flabbergasted by the amount of debris in the area,” the officer wrote in the citation. He called it possibly one of the worst residential cases he had seen.” — U.S. Forest Service officer, in the citation
The officer called it possibly one of the worst residential cases he had seen.
Officers already knew Gatz. He had at least six federal arrest warrants out for him, the citation says — for campfires during fire restrictions, building on forest land, unsanitary conditions and treating the forest as a home. On June 30, a judge ordered him held, pointing to earlier no-shows in court.
Camping on national forest land is normally capped at 14 days in any 30-day stretch.
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