Tarek El Moussa Was Heartbroken When Ex-Wife Christina Hall 'Moved on' With Ant Anstead After Gun Incident Ended Their Marriage
Tarek El Moussa is ready to relive his troubled past.
On Tuesday, February 6, the HGTV star is set to tell all about his divorce from Christina Hall and the shocking 2016 gun incident that led to his marital demise upon release of his book Flip Your Life: how to Find Opportunity in Distress — in Real Estate, Business and Life.
News broke about the Flip or Flop stars’ split in December 2016, though it was later confirmed Hall and El Moussa had been separated seven months earlier due what he described as a "blow-up" fight between him and Hall.
At some point during the heated altercation, which was more than seven years ago, El Moussa fled through his backyard into a nature area with a pistol, prompting Hall to call the police.
Chino Hills State Park neighbors the outdoor area El Moussa was roaming through and is a habitat for wildlife such as mountain lions and bobcats.
For his own safety, El Moussa said he brought a .38-caliber pistol along for the activity as an "insurance policy" after notably obtaining his California concealed-carry license a few weeks prior.
Law enforcement responded to Hall’s phone call at high alert, as they surveyed the wooded area from an overhead helicopter.
At first, El Moussa assumed the helicopter was responding to an emergency or potential wildfire, though it wasn’t long before he realized the cops were after 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 recalled, describing additionally police in off-road vehicles storming the space around him.
Luckily, the officer in the helicopter recognized him from HGTV.
"I heard an officer shout, 'Tarek?'" he explained. "I screamed back, 'Yes! I’m the guy from TV! What are you guys doing?'"
The cops ultimately lowered their weapons, though El Moussa was still headed down a dark path.
- HGTV Star Tarek El Moussa Built Himself 'Back Up' Following Battles With Cancer, Addiction and a 'Very Public Divorce' From Christina Hall
- Tarek El Moussa Reveals He 'Lived in a Halfway House' After Christina Hall Divorce: 'I Didn't Want to Be Alive'
- Tarek El Moussa Admits Ex-Wife Christina Hall 'Leaving' Was the 'Best' and 'Worst Thing': 'It Forced Me to Rebuild My Life'
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“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?” El Moussa expressed in his book.
The chaotic situation ultimately caused the former couple to announce their split in September 2016.
El Moussa and Hall’s divorce was finalized in 2018. They share a daughter, Taylor, 13, and a son, Brayden, 8.
In the weeks after their split, El Moussa went through "physical and emotional h---," he told a news publication while promoting his book, where he wrote about hiding away in his boat and drinking himself unconscious while going through testosterone withdrawals until his friends finally helped him enter a rehab facility.
"Everybody gave up on me: The magazines, the outlets, the network, nobody believed in me," El Moussa described of his feelings following the difficult split.
For some time, El Moussa held onto hope he could salvage his marriage — until he learned Hall had started seeing her ex-husband Ant Anstead.
"When I found out that she had moved on, I would say devastating would be an understatement," he confessed.
El Moussa later found his own new source of happiness in Selling Sunset star Heather Rae El Moussa, whom he recently welcomed a baby boy named Tristan with after the two tied the knot in 2021.
"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 noted, admitting: "I've never said any of this, ever."
People spoke to El Moussa ahead of his book launch.