In his new memoir, the 'Flip or Flop' star details the harrowing gun incident that eventually ended his marriage to his co-star and then-wife Christina back in 2016.
- Feb 1, 2024
AceShowbiz - Tarek El Moussa is telling his side of the story. In his new memoir, the "Flip or Flop" star detailed the harrowing gun incident that eventually ended his marriage to his co-star Christina Hall (Christina El Moussa).
In "Flip Your Life: How to Find Opportunity in Distress - in Real Estate, Business and Life" which will be released on Tuesday, February 6, the realtor recalled the 2016 incident in which he allegedly fled into a nature area with a pistol following a heated altercation with his then-wife. Christina later called 911 before police flooded the Chino Hills State Park.
Tarek reveals in his book that he "went out to our backyard in Yorba Linda and hopped over the fence" after the fight, per PEOPLE. However, Tarek insisted that he wasn't fleeing as he only wanted to exercise and scout the trails near the house after purchasing some new mountain bikes.
As to why he brought a .38-caliber pistol with him, it was because the park is a habitat for wildlife including mountain lions and bobcats. Tarek noted that he got his California concealed-carry license a few weeks prior. He thought there was an emergency, like a wildfire, when he saw a helicopter hovering over his head, though he quickly realized that it was for him.
"A police officer leaning out of the helicopter pointed a rifle at me. Dust swirled around me from the spin of the blades, and a loudspeaker crackled, 'Get your hands in the air!' " he recalls. "I heard an officer shout, 'Tarek?' I screamed back, 'Yes! I'm the guy from TV! What are you guys doing?' "
He continues, "For the next several hours, I sat on a cooler on my driveway, handcuffed. 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?' "
Tarek claims that he was like living a "physical and emotional hell" during the weeks after the split. That led him to hide himself on his boat, drink himself unconscious and go through extreme withdrawal from the testosterone he'd been taking. His friends eventually staged an interference to get him to a rehab facility. "Everybody gave up on me: the magazines, the outlets, the network, nobody believed in me," he said.
The HGTV star, however, noted that he held "nothing against Christina," adding, "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." After taking a long pause, Tarek, who is now married to Heather Rae Young, continues, "I've never said any of this, ever."
