SALINAS, Calif. — A person who began a 2020 wildfire that killed 12 endangered California condors and critically injured a firefighter was convicted Thursday of arson and will withstand 24 years in state jail when he's sentenced, prosecutors mentioned.
Ivan Gomez, 31, was convicted by a Monterey County choose of setting the Large Sur Dolan hearth whereas illegally rising marijuana within the Los Padres Nationwide Forest, the county district legal professional's workplace introduced.
The blaze erupted on Aug. 18, 2020, on the central coast northwest of Los Angeles. It destroyed 10 properties and an 80-acre condor sanctuary in Large Sur that since 1997 had been used to launch captive-bred condors into the wild. There weren't any condors within the facility on the time however a dozen birds died because the blaze unfold throughout 125,000 acres of forest.
Gomez was arrested after state parks officers noticed the fireplace and acquired stories of a person throwing rocks at automobiles on a freeway, authorities mentioned.
Gomez, who was shirtless and sweating, confessed to setting the blaze and was carrying a number of lighters that matched others discovered on the spot the place the fireplace ignited, the DA's workplace mentioned.
The fireplace practically value the lives of 14 firefighters who had been attempting to defend their hearth station however had been overrun by flames and needed to deploy emergency shelters, in line with a report this yr by the Wildland Hearth Classes Realized Heart, which promotes firefighter security. Three had been hospitalized with burns and smoke inhalation, together with a fireplace captain who was critically injured.
The fireplace was lastly contained on Dec. 31, 2020.
Gomez was convicted of 16 felony counts, together with arson, throwing rocks at a automobile and 11 counts of cruelty to animals involving condor deaths.
The California condor is the biggest North American land chicken, with a wingspan of as much as 9 ft.
Within the early Eighties, all 22 condors remaining within the wild had been trapped and introduced right into a captive-breeding program that started releasing the large vultures into Southern California's Los Padres Nationwide Forest in 1992.
That flock has been increasing its vary whereas different condors now occupy components of California's Central Coast, Arizona, Utah and Baja California, Mexico. Immediately, there are greater than 500 identified birds, each in captivity and within the wild.