Tarek El Moussa broke his silence over what really happened when he darted into the woods with a gun back in 2016, following a ‘blowup’ fight with ex-wife Christina Hall.
As he revisited the dark chapter of his life, which led to the end of his seven-year marriage, the Flip or Flop star, 42, detailed the infamous incident that involved him taking a firearm to the Chino Hills State Park Main Ridge Trail.
After Hall called 911 to report that her then-husband ‘took a handgun’ and ran outside, police responded to a report of a ‘possibly suicidal male with a gun.’
In his new book, In Flip Your Life: How to Find Opportunity in Distress — in Real Estate, Business and Life, the father-of-three said after getting in an argument with Hall, he ‘went out to our backyard in Yorba Linda and hopped over the fence.’
Tarek El Moussa broke his silence over what really happened when he darted into the woods with a gun back in 2016, following a ‘blowup’ fight with ex-wife Christina Hall (seen in 2020)
While she feared for his life, El Moussa insists he only fled to get some exercise and check out the trails by their property after recently purchasing some new mountain bikes.
Since the trail is also a home to dangerous wildlife, the TV personality, who is now married to Selling Sunset’s Heather Rae Young, explained he armed himself with a .38-caliber pistol as an ‘insurance policy.’
El Moussa, who had obtained his California concealed-carry license just a few weeks prior, was shocked to see a ‘police officer leaning out of the helicopter’ pointing a ‘rifle’ at him.
‘Dust swirled around me from the spin of the blades, and a loudspeaker crackled, ‘Get your hands in the air!” he recalled in his book. ‘More police in off-road vehicles swarmed.’
El Moussa, then, remembers the office shouting his first name.
‘Yes! I’m the guy from TV! What are you guys doing?’ he yelled back, prompting them to lower their weapons.
‘For the next several hours, I sat on a cooler on my driveway, handcuffed,’ he wrote. ‘That was the very last time we were together as a family: with Christina walking down the driveway, crying, and me sitting there in handcuffs, asking myself, What in the world is going on?’
As he described the aftermath of their split, El Moussa bluntly said it was ‘physical and emotional hell’ that led him to retreat to his boat and drink until he was unconscious.
As he revisited the dark chapter of his life, which led to the end of his seven-year marriage, the Flip or Flop star, 42, detailed the infamous incident that involved him taking a firearm to the Chino Hills State Park Main Ridge Trail; pictured in 2016
After Hall called 911 to report that he ‘took a handgun, put it in his backpack and ran outside,’ police responded to a call of a ‘possibly suicidal male with a gun’
While she feared for his life, El Moussa insists he only fled to get some exercise and check out the trails by their property after recently purchasing some new mountain bikes
He noted that he was was also suffering from ‘withdrawal from the testosterone he’d been taking’ and eventually headed to rehab.
At the time, he said on Today’s Joe Fryer that he ‘absolutely never’ had any plans to take his life that day.
Just like in his memoir, he said he brought the firearm to protect himself from ‘mountain lions, bobcats and rattlesnakes and big wildlife back there.’
‘Everybody gave up on me: the magazines, the outlets, the network, nobody believed in me,’ he told People.
While taking a step back from the spotlight, he lived in a ‘halfway house’ and was still holding onto the hope of rekindling with Hall and reunifying their family.
After finding out she had moved on with Ant Anstead, who she began dating in late 2017, he says ‘devastating would be an understatement’ to describe his pain.
Following their split, El Moussa began dating Heather Rae Young after meeting on the Fourth of July in 2019
Last year, they welcomed their first child together, a son, named Tristan, who turned one earlier this month
Hall and and Anstead tied the knot in 2018, then announced they were expecting a baby boy together in March 2019.
By 2020, however, just two years after their wedding, they revealed they had split.
Meanwhile El Moussa and Young began dating after meeting on the Fourth of July in 2019.
Last year, they welcomed their first child together, a son, named Tristan, who turned one earlier this month.
El Moussa said meeting Young was his ‘breakthrough moment’ that caused him never to ‘look back’ at his old life
In 2022, Hall married Austin-based realtor Joshua Hall.
Seven years after his divorce from Hall, El Moussa said he holds ‘nothing against Christina.’
‘I understand why she did what she did. We had a lot of hard years through my sicknesses and my mental health struggles from the testosterone,’ he told People. ‘I’ve never said any of this, ever.’
El Moussa says he and Hall have an amicable co-parenting relationship and that they ‘all communicate well.’
‘We really focus on the kids,’ he said.
El Moussa also gushed that after meeting Young he has never ‘looked back’ and is ‘just so happy and excited about the family’ he has today.
He gushed meeting his wife was his ‘breakthrough moment.’
