(LAist) On August 16, 29-year-old Angel Gilberto Garcia-Avalos was illegally driving his Nissan SUV off-road in the Sequoia National Forest, in northern Kern County. While driving, Garcia-Avalos stuck his vehicle on a piece of raised land. He tried and failed to free the car, and heat from the SUV’s muffler and catalytic converter lit some dry grass underneath the car on fire. This small fire quickly grew and spread into a 42 square-mile blaze now known as the Cedar Fire.
On Thursday, Garcia-Avalos pleaded guilty to two charges of giving false information to a forest officer, and one charge of causing a fire to burn in the forest, according to the L.A. Times. As a condition of Garcia-Avalos’ plea, which was entered the same day federal prosecutors first filed charges against him, a federal judge sentenced him to 13 months in prison, and ordered him to pay a $61 million restitution fee for the Cedar fire’s damage.
