{"id":21054,"date":"2025-10-24T08:10:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/21054\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T08:10:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:10:27","slug":"las-pacific-palisades-fire-suspect-pleads-not-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/21054\/","title":{"rendered":"LA’s Pacific Palisades fire suspect pleads not guilty"},"content":{"rendered":"

The man accused of deliberately lighting the Pacific Palisades wildfires in Los Angeles that killed 12 people has pleaded not guilty to three federal arson-related charges.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, is charged with “maliciously” starting a fire in January that was suppressed but continued to smoulder near Pacific Palisades before reigniting a week later amid fierce winds.<\/p>\n

On Thursday before a federal court in Los Angeles, he pleaded not guilty to three felony counts in a grand jury indictment returned on October 15 \u2014 arson, destruction of property by means of fire and illegally setting timber afire.<\/p>\n

If convicted as charged, he would face a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a statutory maximum sentence of 45 years behind bars.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The fire destroyed much of the Pacific Palisades are of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0 (AP: Etienne Laurent)<\/p>\n

Mr Rinderknecht, who was arrested earlier this month in Florida<\/a>, was ordered to remain held without bond as he awaits trial.<\/p>\n

The defendant tried to insist that he wanted to “talk about” his detention, but his lawyer, Steve Haney, cut him off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In seeking bail for his client, Mr Haney had argued that his client essentially was being charged with an arson allegedly committed seven days before a much larger fire for which he is being blamed.<\/p>\n

The indictment holds Mr Rinderknecht responsible for one of the most destructive Los Angeles fires on record.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before and after the fire ripped through the Pacific Palisades<\/a><\/p>\n

Landmark buildings, homes, and shopping malls are among the structures destroyed in LA’s affluent Pacific Palisades neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

The blaze levelled about 6,000 buildings, with property damage estimated at $US150 billion ($230 billion).<\/p>\n

According to prosecutors, Mr Rinderknecht had been working as an Uber driver on New Year’s Eve before dropping a passenger off and heading to a hilltop trail near Pacific Palisades, where he once lived.<\/p>\n

Once there, according to court documents, he listened to a rap song whose music video depicted things being set on fire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He then proceeded to light a real blaze shortly after midnight and fled the scene, only to return a short time later to watch the flames and firefighters.<\/p>\n

The Palisades fire coincided with another massive wind-driven blaze about 56 kilometres to the east known as the Eaton Fire, which wiped out much of the community of Altadena.<\/p>\n

Mr Rinderknecht will face trial on December 16.<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man accused of deliberately lighting the Pacific Palisades wildfires in Los Angeles that killed 12 people has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7218,7,175,7211,48,52,51,47,50,49,534,17099],"class_list":{"0":"post-21054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-arson","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-fires","11":"tag-jonathan-rinderknecht","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-la-headlines","14":"tag-la-news","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","17":"tag-los-angeles-news","18":"tag-pacific-palisades","19":"tag-rozella-oliver"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}