Justin Wayne Halstenberg, who was convicted in May of having set the Line Fire in Highland on September 5, 2024, after which charred 43,978-acre acres in its infernal progression north and eastward up into the San Bernardino Mountains wreaking more than $100 million in destruction and damage for more than a month, was sentenced to 16 years to life in state prison on Wednesday, October 1.
Using self-styled incendiary devices, Halstenberg made three attempts at starting fires in the area of east Highland on September 5, 2025, according to prosecutors. Two of those fires failed to take hold, one when it burned out after burning less than ten square feet of vegetation that was not dry enough to fully ignite because it was irrigated regularly and another because a passerby good Samaritan stomped it out before it could spread. The last of the fires that arson investigators testified Halstenberg lit, however, grew into a major conflagration.
Almost miraculously, despite wending a fiery path through 68.71 square miles including within and very near to populated areas, no lives were lost and a mere six structures and a water conveyance pipeline destroyed, in large measure due to the massive response of firefighters to the periphery of the blaze. Six of those firefighters were injured during operations.
Deputy District Attorney Justin Crocker and Deputy District Attorney Andrew Peppler presented a narrative to the eight-man, four-women?-woman jury that was constructed with the testimony of San Bernardino County Sheriff’s detectives Jacob Hernandez and Lorraine Bertetto, Deputy Ryan Garcia and sheriff’s department employee Paul Bugar, sheriff’s department crime scene specialist Shira Johnson, California Division of Forestry Division Commander Matthew Kirkhart, Fire Captain Michael Watanabe, and firefighters/arson investigators Matthew Franklin, Andrew Arthen, Jan Rybczynski, Bennet Milloy and Joshua Williams, all of whom worked out of the state fire protection division’s Highland Office; California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection officers/arson investigators John May, Jason Fairfax and Ariel Sosa, all of whom work out of the state fire division’s Riverside office; California Division of Forestry firefighter Jose Hernandez; Patrick Aguada, Monica Sanchez and Joel Franklin, financial specialists with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Service; Highland residents Richard Scott, Marlene Acuna, James Fee, Gagandeep Singh and Damien Clune; as well as Running Springs residents Lori Bartosch and Brooke Palenchar, whose homes were, respectively, damaged and destroyed in the Line Fire, the fourth most damaging fire in San Bernardino County history in terms of acreage burned.
Crocker and Peppler presented to the jury the prosecution’s theory that Halstenberg, who worked as a deliveryman for a shipping company, was a serial arsonist who had set, or sought to set, fires at various locations in Southern California, including multiple fires in Jurupa Valley over an extended period in the summer of 2023 and one fire in Chino Hills three days before the line fire, in addition to the three fires in Highland on September 5, 2024.
On that day, the temperature in Highland reached 108 degree Fahrenheit. Three distinct fires were initiated in the east Highland area in the mid- to late afternoon, between 4:11 p.m. and around 5:40 p.m., the first on Bacon Lane, the next on a far east extension of Base Line Road and the third on Base Line Road roughly a quarter of a mile to the east of the previous fire. It was the third of these that expanded into the Line Fire. The first fire appears to have burned out on its own. The second was stomped out by Scott when he came across it.
Traffic on that section of Base Line Road was not particularly heavy that day and investigators, consulting multiple videos that were available from traffic cameras and other sources, spotted Halstenberg’s distinctive 2007 Chrevrolet Silverado on many of those videos and then cross referenced that information with license plate readers that had been installed at various points throughout Highland, as well as with Halstenberg’s cellphone.
At 5:44 p.m. the front viewing video camera in a Tesla being driven east on Base Line Avenue by Highland Resident Marlene Acuna captured the moving image of Halstenberg in his white truck going west on Baseline. Some 37 seconds later, the nascent Line Fire, burning in a confined area within some chaparral just off the roadway on the north side of Base Line looms into the Tesla camera’s field of view.
What was learned from this evidence was that Halstenberg had driven to Highland from his residence in Norco, where he had spent roughly and hour-and-a-half at the San Manuel Tribe Yaamava’ Casino, whereupon he drove around Highland to various spots over the next nine to nine-and-a-half hours. At around 3:25 p.m., according to the testimony of Bugar, Halstenberg’s cellphone was shut off and was not turned back until 6:44 p.m..
Based upon items found near the ignition point for all three fires, arson investigators theorized that Halstenberg utilized incendiary devices fashioned from coins around which he wrapped blue-lined yellow writing tablet paper, which he perhaps fastened with industrial staples and twisted at either or both ends. The investigators believed, and Crocker and Peppler alleged in court, that Halsenberg lit the paper and with the passenger side window of his pick-up truck rolled down, he would fling the burning device as far out into the dry vegetation at the side of the road as he could. A tablet of blue-lined yellow writing paper was found in his truck when he was arrested on September 10, 2024. Crocker and Peppler suggested, through the testimony of other witnesses, in particular California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection arson investigators in Riverside County who worked on trying to determine the origin points and sources of the arson fires in Jurupa Valley in 2023, that Halstenberg’s incendiary device designs had evolved over time. The devices he used in 2023, according to testimony, involved coins or other relatively heavy objects stuffed inside a cigarette box along with a paper industrial towel that was lit and placed into dry vegetation along a roadside.
In his closing arguments, Crocker emphasized that both cellphone/cell tower data and video evidence proved that Halstenberg, who during his interrogation by investigators maintained that he had not been in Highland on September 5 and denied that he had driven around the city, was in Highland until around 11 p.m. that night. Crocker suggested that Halstenberg was there until that hour so he could watch the bright red fire burning in the foothills and admire his work. Crocker said that data on Halstenberg’s cellphone indicated that before he left Highland that night, he had read early postings by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and reports from news sources pertaining to the Line Fire.
Throughout the trial, Halstenberg’s attorneys – Deputy Public Defender Luke Byward and Deputy Public Defender Justin Ewanisyk – maintained that the evidence produced by the prosecution did not definitively establish his guilt and that much of that evidence, such as the cellphone location data, was being misrepresented by the prosecution or that it could be interpreted in a way to adduce Halstenberg’s innocence. At the trial, he emphasized the underhanded tactics used by sheriff’s department and arson investigators in seeking to wring a confession from their client, which he never made. Those tactics included multiple misrepresentations as to the facts surrounding the case and evidence which did not, in fact, exist, as well as the investigators disregard his request for an attorney.
He was convicted of setting both the fire on Base Line Road that was ignited at around 4:26 p.m. on September 5, 2024 that was extinguished by Scott and of setting the other fire on Base Line Road at 5:45 p.m. that went on to become the Line Fire.
Prior to trial, Halstenberg had been charged with 14 arson-related counts. Two of those were dismissed by the court.
After more than six-and-a-half days of deliberation, the jury returned guilty verdicts on nine of the twelve charges. On the three remaining charges, Count 2 – felony arson causing great bodily arising out of the Line Fire, the jury deadlocked 6 to 6; Count 4 – felony arson of a structure or forest land growing out of the Bacon Lane Fire, the jury hung 11 to 1 in favor of conviction; and on Count 5 – felony possession of material or a device for arson, the jury voted 8 in favor of conviction and 4 for acquittal.
On the remaining nine charges – Count 1 – felony aggravated arson; Count 3 felony arson of an inhabited structure or property; Count 6 – felony arson of a structure or forest land; Count 7 – felony possession of material or device for arson; Count 8 -felony arson of a structure or forest land; Count 9 felony possession of material or a devise for arson; Count 10 – felony arson of an inhabited structure or property; Count 11 – felony arson of a structure or forest land and Count 14 – felony arson of property – the jury returned guilty verdicts.
Judge Cheryl C. Kersey sentenced Halstenberg to six years in prison for starting the first fire on Base Line Avenue and to ten years in prison for starting the second fire on Base Line Avenue and affixed a requirement that Halstenberg pay $11,108 to the Bartosh Family in restitution.
Abandoning his previous maintenance of his innocence, Halstenberg pleaded guilty to setting the first of the three fires, lit at 4:11 p.m. September 5, 2024, the Bacon Fire, near the 90 degree turn on Bacon Lane. The deal worked out by prosecutors and Halstenberg’s defense team entailed no time in prison for having set the Bacon Fire and the State of California foregoing another prosecution of Halstenberg on charges related to the September 2, 2004 fire in Chino Hills.
-Mark Gutglueck