By Josh Campbell, Veronica Miracle, Andi Babineau

Los Angeles (CNN) — A 29-year-old Florida man is under arrest on suspicion of arson in connection with the Palisades Fire, which burned thousands of homes and killed 12 people when it tore through the Los Angeles area in January.

Florida resident Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, is facing a federal charge of destruction of property by means of fire, according to Bill Essayli, the acting US attorney for Southern California.

The suspect, who lived in the Palisades neighborhood at the time, was working as an Uber driver and dropped off a passenger on New Year’s Eve before walking up a nearby trail and starting the fire, officials said.

Rinderknecht allegedly generated an image on ChatGPT “depicting a burning city,” according to Essayli.

“The investigation into the Palisades Fire of January 2025 was lengthy, complex and, as I mentioned, extremely thorough,” Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The Palisades Fire, which began the morning of January 7, has been determined to be a “holdover” fire, according to the criminal complaint, meaning it started from the remnants of an earlier blaze.

Six days earlier, there had been another fire in the same vicinity, according to satellite images and dispatch recordings analyzed by CNN. That fire had been reported contained within hours by local firefighters after growing to about eight acres, according to alerts from the LA fire department, which noted a team would work to ensure no flare-ups occurred.

The Los Angeles City Fire Department had suppressed the Lachman Fire on January 1, the complaint says, but “unbeknownst to anyone the fire continued to smolder and burn underground, within the root structure of dense vegetation.”

The suspect is expected in federal court for a first appearance Wednesday afternoon, Essayli said.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives determined the fire “was ignited with an open flame,” Essayli said.

Rinderknecht lived in the Palisades and was familiar with the neighborhood, which was full of dense vegetation, officials said.

“It took the defendant several tries to contact 911 to report the fire,” Essayli said. “He fled the scene in his car, but turned around after passing fire engines driving in the opposite direction to fight the fire.”

Essayli declined to speak to Rinderknecht’s motive.

“Part of the lengthy time that it took to go over the thousands of acres that were burned is we literally had agents with our partners on their hands and knees crawling through fire debris,” said ATF Special Agent in Charge Kenny Cooper.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta told CNN earlier this year there were “some indications that arson is a possibility that we have to be open to.”

Fifteen members of the ATF’s National Response Team headed up the investigation into the fire’s “cause and origins,” ATF deputy assistant director Tim Jones previously told CNN.

The proximity of the two fires had prompted questions as to whether winds could have rekindled smoldering debris left from New Year’s Eve fireworks to trigger the Palisades Fire, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post.

The Palisades wildfire is the ninth deadliest wildfire in state history, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The deadly inferno in Los Angeles is the third-most destructive wildfire in Southern California history, destroying thousands of homes and businesses and burning more than 23,000 acres.

The fire was anticipated to be among the costliest wildfires in the history of the United States, a climate expert predicted.

“While we cannot undo the damage and destruction that was done, we hope his arrest and the charges against him bring some measure of justice to the victims of this horrific tragedy,” Essayli said in a social media post.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The-CNN-Wire
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