Prosecutors say Uber driver started Palisades Fire that killed 12
Prosecutors say a New Year’s Day fire set by Uber driver Jonathan Rinderknecht smoldered underground, reignited a week later, and became the deadly Palisades Fire.
Federal prosecutors opened Jonathan Rinderknecht’s trial by saying the 30-year-old Uber driver did not just light a small brush fire in the Santa Monica Mountains. They said his alleged act started a chain of events that left the Palisades in ruins after the blaze reignited days later and turned into one of the deadliest fires in Los Angeles history.
Rinderknecht has pleaded not guilty to three federal counts: destruction of property by means of fire, arson affecting property used in interstate commerce, and timber set afire. He was indicted on October 15, 2025, and the U.S. Department of Justice says he has been in federal custody since his arrest on October 7, 2025. If convicted, he could face up to 45 years in prison before U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang in downtown Los Angeles.
Prosecutors told jurors that the fire began after a tense holiday night in which Rinderknecht was upset about not getting a New Year’s Eve invitation and spent part of the evening driving Uber passengers. After dropping off a rider near a house he once shared with an ex-boyfriend, they said, he drove to a trail near Skull Rock Trailhead and started the first blaze near the Palisades Highlands. That fire, later called the Lachman Fire, burned fewer than 10 acres and did not damage structures, but it was not fully extinguished. The government says it smoldered underground in dense vegetation and root systems before strong winds on January 7, 2025 pushed it back to the surface as the Palisades Fire.
The Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action review described the area as a high-risk wildland-urban interface, especially dangerous under Santa Ana wind conditions, and said the report drew on nearly 100 interviews, radio traffic, eyewitness accounts and other evidence. A CAL FIRE update on January 12, 2025, put the fire at 23,713 acres burned, 11% contained, with 604 structures destroyed, 83 damaged and five civilian deaths at that stage. Later reporting said the Palisades and Eaton fires together killed 31 people and destroyed about 13,000 homes and other residential properties.
The defense has signaled the fight ahead: that Rinderknecht is being turned into a scapegoat for firefighting failures and that investigators still do not have proof he caused the disaster. Ronnie Villanueva, the interim fire chief, called the arrest a step toward accountability, justice and healing, but the case now turns on the same brutal question that hangs over the wreckage in Pacific Palisades: whether one New Year’s Day fire truly set off the catastrophe that followed.
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