Jury Selection Highlights Palisades Fire Scars: California Brief

Jury Selection Reopens LA Fire Trauma

Destroyed homes at the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates after the Palisades Fire

Photographer: Roger Kisby/Bloomberg

Jury selection in the Palisades Fire trial for a man accused of arson turned into a reminder of how raw the disaster still is across Los Angeles, Mitchell Black reports. Prospective jurors described evacuations and connections to people who lost homes before attorneys settled on a 12-person panel of nine women and three men.

Jonathan Rinderknecht, an Uber driver, is accused of lighting chaparral on Hidden Buddha Hill in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2025, in a fire that prosecutors say smoldered underground and a week later became the Palisades blaze that ...