Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, Jonathan Rinderknecht finished up a stint as an Uber driver and drove to a hiking area just north of Pacific Palisades, California.

It was a familiar place for the 29-year-old – not far from where he had previously lived, according to a federal investigator who provided the following account of his movements that night in court documents.

Rinderknecht got out of his car and hiked up the trail, past a sign stating “Danger” and “No Fires/Smoking,” toward a small clearing sometimes called the “Hidden Buddha” for a hollowed out stump where people placed Buddha figurines.

At 11:47 p.m., he took out his iPhone and captured a 360-degree video of the area. Seven minutes later he played the song “Un Zder, Un Thé” by the French rapper Josman, about despair and bitterness.

There, by himself, with the world stretched out below, Rinderknecht entered into the New Year.

At 12:12:01 a.m., a camera just under 5 miles away captured the first indication of a fire near that location, according to the court documents.

That blaze soon developed into the Lachman Fire, which grew to eight acres before firefighters were able to knock it down on New Year’s Day. But the fire continued smoldering underground, and on the windy morning of January 7, it started up again. That “holdover” fire rapidly grew into the Palisades Fire that swept through Pacific Palisades, destroying thousands of homes and businesses and killing 12 people, making it one of the most damaging