A Florida man has been arrested in connection with the Palisades Fire, which tore through Los Angeles in January.
The more than 23,000-acre blaze on January 7 killed 12 people and destroyed nearly 6,900 structures.
Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, is facing a federal charge of destruction of property by means of fire, state prosecutors said
The suspect was working as an Uber driver at the time and dropped off a passenger on New Year’s Eve before walking up a popular hiking trail overlooking the Pacific Palisades, a wealthy coastal suburb.
Rinderknecht then allegedly lit a fire, Bill Essayli, the acting US attorney for Southern California, said.
Essayli added: ‘He left as soon as he saw the fire trucks heading to the location.
‘He turned around and went back up there. And he took some video and watched them fire the fire.’
Rinderknecht allegedly lied to police during an interview, claiming he was near the bottom of the trail.
He also earlier used ChatGPT to create at least nine artificially generated images of a ‘burning city’, Essayli said in a post on X.
A fire was reported shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day that charred eight acres near the Skull Rock trailhead in the Palisades Highlands.
The flames, called the Lachman fire, had been contained, city fire department alerts said.
Investigators suspect that the Palisades fire was a ‘holdover’ fire, meaning it erupted from the remnants of the earlier blaze.
Satellite images show the fires’ burn scars overlap.
Officials still list the cause of the Palisades fire as ‘under investigation’.
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