In the aftermath of the catastrophic wildfires that killed at least 42 people and left thousands of Northern California homes and businesses in rubble and ruins, right-wing media outlets reported that an undocumented immigrant was arrested in connection to the fires.

Only problem: The reports are false.



“There is a story out there that he’s the arsonist in these fires,” Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano said at a press conference Tuesday. “That’s not the case. There’s no indication he’s related to these fires at all. ... I wanted to kill that speculation right now, so we didn’t have things running too far out of control.”



The rumors flared after officials arrested a 29-year-old man in Maxwell Farms Regional Park last weekend. Jesus Fabian Gonzalez, a homeless man "known to deputies," had started a fire to keep warm, Giordano said Tuesday. Gonzalez, who frequented the park, was seen "walking away from a small fire" on Sunday afternoon carrying a fire extinguisher and lighter, the sheriff said.

Law enforcement "asked him if he started the fire, and he said he started the fire to warm himself up,” Giordano said, noting that the fire was so small that a deputy had extinguished most of it before firefighters arrived.

Gonzalez is currently being held in Sonoma County jail on a $100,000 bond, and there is no evidence linking him to the dozens of wind-fueled fires that erupted last Sunday, torching nearly 200,000 acres across the region.



The cause of the wildfires, which are still burning across multiple counties, is still under investigation.

On Monday, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat published a story about the arrest. Then Breitbart, the right-wing website run by President Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon, picked up on the story.