The trial of Jonathan Rinderknecht, a 29-year-old occasional Uber driver charged with sparking the blaze that became the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles history, opened Monday in federal court before US District Judge Anne Hwang.
Rinderknecht is accused of lighting a small fire on New Year’s Day 2025 in the area that came to be called the Lachman fire. Los Angeles Fire Department crews extinguished the blaze on Jan. 2, but it reignited five days later during extreme Santa Ana winds after smoldering undetected in dry hillsides, according to court documents and prosecutors. The rekindled blaze grew into the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people.
Fire officials describe such fires as “holdover” or “zombie” fires — blazes that continue burning underground or in deep vegetation after the visible flames are suppressed. The trial is expected to hinge on whether the jury finds that Rinderknecht should have known the small fire he allegedly lit could rekindle into a catastrophic event.
“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.”
A grand jury indicted Rinderknecht in October on three felony counts for lighting a fire that destroyed national, state and private lands and buildings and resulted in 12 deaths. If convicted, he faces between five and 45 years in prison. He has been in federal custody since his arrest on Oct. 7.
Federal prosecutors have said in a pre-trial memo filed April 29 that Rinderknecht was upset over a failed relationship and his lack of plans for New Year’s Eve when he allegedly lit the Lachman fire. According to prosecutors, witnesses reported that Rinderknecht was agitated and driving erratically while working for Uber that night. He also allegedly spoke about Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, 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,’” prosecutors said.
Rinderknecht’s attorney, Steven Haney, has said his client is being “scapegoated” by the Los Angeles Fire Department. Haney has said he plans to argue that the government lacks solid evidence linking Rinderknecht to the Lachman fire and has noted that fireworks were heard in the area around the time the fire started.
Judge Hwang has made several evidentiary rulings ahead of the trial. She barred evidence related to alleged negligence by the fire department in failing to fully extinguish the smaller Lachman fire, blocking the defense from presenting testimony from firefighters and a state park ranger gathered as part of a separate lawsuit by fire victims against the city.
Hwang also barred prosecutors from introducing AI-generated images Rinderknecht allegedly created of a fire in the months before the incident. She previously expressed concern that jurors might find the government’s theory confusing — for instance, if they found Rinderknecht guilty of lighting the Lachman fire but not responsible for the Palisades blaze.
The US attorney’s office said in a June 1 press release that law enforcement identified Rinderknecht as the person who set the Lachman fire “using witness statements, video surveillance, cellphone data, and analysis of fire dynamics and patterns at the scene.” Hwang was appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden in 2024.