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. …