Uber driver charged with setting what became L.A.'s Palisades Fire was repeatedly listening to a French rap song with a music video about lighting fires, prosecutors say
According to a criminal complaint filed in federal court, the suspect, Jonathan Rinderknecht of Melbourne, Fla., listened to the same song nine times before igniting the blaze.
Federal authorities in Los Angeles announced on Wednesday that they have arrested a man in Florida and charged him with intentionally setting what eventually became the 2025 Palisades Fire, one of the most destructive wildfires in California history.
Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, a former Pacific Palisades, Calif., resident who now lives in Melbourne, Fla., was arrested on Tuesday and charged with destruction of property by means of fire, the Justice Department said. He was expected to make his initial appearance on Wednesday in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
“A single person’s recklessness caused one of the worst fires Los Angeles has ever seen, resulting in death and widespread destruction in Pacific Palisades,” Bill Essayli, acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement. “While we cannot bring back what victims lost, we hope this criminal case brings some measure of justice to those affected by this horrific tragedy.”
The Palisades Fire scorched more than 20,000 acres, destroyed thousands of homes and buildings and left 12 people dead.
How officials say the suspect set the fire
According to prosecutors, Rinderknecht was working as an Uber driver on New Year’s Eve in the Pacific Palisades area when he set the fire near Skull Rock Trailhead by a clearing known as the “Hidden Buddha” on a popular hiking trail.
The fire, dubbed the Lachman Fire, burned eight acres before firefighters thought it was extinguished. But officials now believe the fire “continued to smolder and burn underground within the root structure of dense vegetation,” prosecutors said. On Jan. 7, heavy winds caused the fire to resurface and spread, and within hours it became the massive Palisades Fire.
According to a criminal complaint unsealed on Wednesday, two passengers that Rinderknecht drove on separate trips between 10:15 p.m. and 11:15 p.m. that evening told investigators that Rinderknecht “appeared agitated and angry.”
After dropping off a passenger in Pacific Palisades, Rinderknecht — who once lived in the neighborhood — drove toward Skull Rock Trailhead, parked his car and walked up the trail, the complaint alleges.
He then used his iPhone to take videos at a nearby hilltop area and listened to a French rap song, “Un Zder, Un The" by Josman, whose music video shows the rapper “lighting things on fire,” according to the complaint. Prosecutors allege Rinderknecht listened to the same song nine times in the previous four days before setting the fire and watched the music video three times in that span.
After setting the fire, prosecutors allege that Rinderknecht called 911 several times, but didn’t get through because his iPhone was likely out of cellphone range. When he finally connected to report the fire, a local resident had already reported it. But during the call with 911, Rinderknecht typed a question into the ChatGPT app on his iPhone, asking, “Are you at fault if a fire is lift [sic] because of your cigarettes,” according to the complaint. (ChatGPT’s response was yes.)
Rinderknecht then got into his car and drove away from the fire “at a high rate of speed,” passing fire engines that were responding to the blaze, the complaint alleges. About 45 minutes later, he returned to the scene and took four short videos of the fire and firefighters on his iPhone from the same trail.
He later told investigators that he turned around and offered to help the firefighters battle the blaze. He also told investigators he was at the bottom of the hiking trail when he first saw the fire, but geolocation data from his iPhone showed that “he was standing in a clearing 30 feet from the fire as it rapidly grew.”
Authorities have not publicly identified a motive.
At a press conference in Los Angeles, Kenny Cooper, special agent in charge of the L.A. Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, declined to speculate when asked if the suspect was “obsessed with fire.”
“That will be addressed in the trial,” Cooper said, adding: “We do have evidence of that."
Other evidence collected from Rinderknecht’s phone included AI-generated images depicting a burning city created from a ChatGPT prompt that references “a crowd of people is running away from the fire” and “a conglomerate of the richest people” who are living behind “a gigantic gate with a big dollar sign on it.”
“They are chilling, watching the world burn down,” he wrote.
If convicted, Rinderknecht would face a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
If convicted on arson charges, Rinderknecht would face a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison. But when a reporter asked Wednesday why prosecutors weren’t also charging Rinderknecht with “murder,” Essayli said “additional charges” could be coming “shortly.”
“This is, right now, just a criminal complaint; we wanted to arrest him, we wanted to get him into custody,” Essayli said. “We have not determined all the charges he’s going to face. We will be presenting that evidence to a grand jury. We will make decisions about additional charges at that time.”
If the crime of arson causes injury or death, prosecutors may choose to seek harsher sentences such as life imprisonment or even the federal death penalty.
What was the Palisades Fire?
The Palisades Fire was one of eight simultaneous blazes that ravaged Southern California in January 2025. Fueled by drought-stricken brush and driven by 90-mile-per-hour Santa Ana winds whipping over the Santa Monica Mountains, the fire was first spotted in the hills above the Pacific Palisades at 10:30 am on Jan. 7.
It covered about 10 acres at the time. By 3:10 pm, it had spread across more than 1,200 acres of bone-dry landscape. Challenging conditions — including gusts that kept firefighting helicopters on the ground — made the flames impossible to contain, forcing more than 100,000 Palisades, Malibu and Topanga residents to evacuate.
When the last embers of the Palisades Fire were finally extinguished 24 days later, it had burned a total of 23,448 acres, killed 12 people and destroyed nearly 7,000 structures, making it the third-most-destructive California wildfire on record — and the most destructive ever to occur in the city of Los Angeles. Damages have been estimated at $25 billion, and even now rebuilding has only just begun.