NBC4 Investigates spoke with one of the witnesses to the Lachman Fire, and he said he heard a boom and saw a flash from a firework, close to where flames ignited and grew into the brush fire that was blamed by investigators for smoldering underground before reigniting into the devastating Palisades Fire last year.
“The white flash bang that I saw behind me, like, I saw it, it was close!” Ari Sallus said of the loud bang he heard on New Year’s Night, 2025. He said he was walking on a road in the Palisades Highlands to try to see into Los Angeles to watch the celebratory midnight fireworks at the time.
Sallus, who lived in the Palisades for years, said he then saw a small orange glow grow near Skull Rock trail.
“And then I like, make it out with my eye, oh that’s a fire!,” he said, and began calling 911 to report it.
His account was documented in a February 2025 interview with a Los Angeles Fire Department arson investigator, which is now part of the Palisades Fire investigative file. Sallus said he agreed to share his story because some authorities had said there weren’t any fireworks in the Palisades that night.
“I saw some reports that said that there were definitely no fireworks in that area, and I saw a firework behind me. It was a white light and a loud bang, and I clearly witnessed that,” he said.
Federal prosecutors have charged 30-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht with causing the Lachman Fire, which was contained within a few hours on New Year’s Day.
He pleaded not guilty to federal arson charges.
The criminal complaint filed against Rinderknecht last fall alleges he ignited the brush with an open flame, not a firework, and said Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents had ruled out the possibility that fireworks were involved.
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“Fireworks were excluded because … nobody (including Rinderknecht) saw fireworks in the vicinity of the Pacific Palisades prior to the start of the Lachman Fire,” a special agent swore in a declaration filed in court.
First assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, in announcing Rinderknecth’s arrest in October 2025, dismissed the notion that fireworks could have been the cause.
“We have no evidence that any fireworks were set off in this area at the time the fire was ignited,” he said.
Essayli’s office said in a statement Monday, “There is no evidence that fireworks were set off in the origin area at the time the Lachman Fire ignited. The defendant’s own recorded statement – corroborated by other witnesses – is that there were no fireworks in the origin area that night. We look forward to proving this at trial.”
Rinderknecht’s defense lawyer said last week that there were numerous accounts of fireworks, and said the ATF court filing that said there were none can be proven false.
“Thirty witnesses heard fireworks going off in the immediate area,” Rinderknecht’s defense lawyer Steve Haney said during a press conference on the steps of the federal courthouse in Downtown LA.
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He said those witnesses include an LAFD fire captain, a security guard, and several Palisades residents, who provided similar accounts of seeing a flash, hearing a fireworks-like explosion, and seeing flames where the Lachman Fire started.
“The security guard saw 4 kids running away from the hill in hoodies,” Haney said.
“Now I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t deduce that – that is how the fire started, by way of a firework,” he said.
Rinderknecht is being held with no bail and his trial is set for June.
Haney also said last week he asked prosecutors to drop the criminal charges entirely, citing the accounts of several LAFD firefighters deposed as part of a civil lawsuit, who said the Lachman Fire continued to smoke in the days after the open flames were extinguished.