Tarek El Moussa broke his silence on the 911 incident that unraveled his relationship with Christina Hall.
In an except from his upcoming book, Flip Your Life: How to Find Opportunity in Distress — in Real Estate, Business and Life, El Moussa wrote that after he “went out to our backyard in Yorba Linda and hopped over the fence” after a heated argument with Hall, 40, in 2016.
El Moussa brought his licensed .38-caliber pistol with him as he went for a run due to the mountain lions and bobcats in the neighboring Chino Hills State Park.
“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 wrote in his book, per People. “I heard an officer shout, ‘Tarek?’ I screamed back, ‘Yes! I’m the guy from TV! What are you guys doing?’”
El Moussa continued: “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?”
In 2016, Us Weekly confirmed that authorities were called to the then-couple’s home in California in response to a tip that there was a “possibly suicidal male with a gun” on the property.
An eyewitness told police at the time that Hall was “crying and shaking,” while El Moussa told the deputies that he “had no intention of hurting himself.” He agreed to “voluntarily relinquish all of his firearms” after the incident.
El Moussa referred to the weeks after their breakup as “physical and emotional hell,” telling People on Wednesday, January 31, “Everybody gave up on me: the magazines, the outlets, the network, nobody believed in me.”
Despite their ups and downs, El Moussa and Hall, who officially announced their split via a joint statement in December 2016, have since gotten to a better place as they continue to coparent daughter Taylor, 13, and son Brayden, 8.
“I hold 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 revealed on Wednesday. “I’ve never said any of this, ever.”
Hall moved on with Ant Anstead after her split from El Moussa. Hall and Anstead, 44, got married in December 2018 and revealed three months later that they were expecting their first child together. One year after welcoming son Hudson, Hall announced she and Anstead called it quits.
Christina found love again with Josh Hall, whom she married in 2022. Meanwhile, El Moussa started dating Heather Rae El Moussa (née Young) and they got married in 2021. The pair welcomed their first child together, son Tristan, in January 2023.
“[Meeting Heather in 2019 was] my breakthrough moment. Ever since that day, I just haven’t looked back and I’m just so happy and excited about the family I have today,” El Moussa added to People on Wednesday. “I never gave up. Through a lot of hard work, pain and just dreaming, I was able to get to where I am today.”
Flip Your Life: How to Find Opportunity in Distress — in Real Estate, Business and Life hits bookshelves on February 6.
