SACRAMENTO, California — A California state firefighter arrested on suspicion of arson last week started out in the state’s inmate firefighter program after a DUI felony, according to court records released Tuesday.
Robert Hernandez’s criminal record and history of working as an inmate firefighter emerged in a court filing ahead of his first hearing in Sonoma County Superior Court on five felony charges of setting fires in Sonoma and Mendocino counties in August and September.
Hernandez, 38, started a six-year sentence in 2017 after being convicted of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated in San Bernardino, according to county court records and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
He was released on parole in December 2018 after serving eight months as a firefighter at the Bishop-area Owens Valley Conservation Camp, one of several facilities jointly operated by Cal Fire and the CDCR to put inmates to work fighting fires and shorten their sentences for good behavior. While on parole, he attended the Ventura Training Center, which educates and certifies former inmate firefighters, from January to October 2019. He was discharged from parole in November 2020, according to CDCR.