Trial begins for man accused of sparking LA’s deadly Palisades fire

The trial of a 29-year-old charged with sparking a wildfire that went on to become the deadly Palisades inferno, the most destructive blaze in Los Angeles history, is set to begin on Monday in a case that has gripped the city as Angelenos seek answers more than a year after the deadly fire.

Jonathan Rinderknecht, an occasional Uber driver, is accused of starting a small blaze on New Year’s Day 2025, later dubbed the Lachman fire. Although the Los Angeles fire department extinguished the fire on 2 January, it reignited five days later due to high winds and tinderbox conditions after burning undetected deep in the dry hillsides.

This type of fire is known as a “holdover” or “zombie” fire, and the trial is expected to hinge on whether a jury finds Rinderknecht responsible for knowing that the small wildfire he lit could balloon into a deadly blaze that ultimately killed 12 people.

“This isn’t so unusual, it’s not on the outer limits of foreseeable. We have Santa Ana winds every year,” Aya Gruber, a criminal law expert and the Harold Medill Heimbaugh professor of law at the University of Southern California, told the Guardian in January. “You could also argue that this type of zombie fire is very unusual, so that is what it would turn on.”

In October, a grand jury charged Rinderknecht with three counts – all felonies – for lighting a fire that destroyed national, state and private lands and buildings and killed 12. If found guilty, Rinderknecht could face between five and 45 years in prison. Rinderknecht has been in federal custody since his arrest on 7 October.

Federal prosecutors are expected to argue that Rinderknecht was upset over a failed relationship and his lack of plans for New Year’s Eve, when he allegedly lit the Lachman blaze, according to a pre-trial memo US attorneys filed on 29 April.

Witnesses reported that Rinderknecht was agitated and driving erratically while working for Uber on New Year’s Eve, according to prosecutors. He also allegedly spoke about Luigi Mangione, the accused murderer of , and later told investigators someone might commit arson in the Palisades “out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as ‘we’re basically being enslaved by them’”.