Tarek El Moussa Details Gun Incident that Ended Marriage to ‘Flip or Flop’ Costar Christina Hall

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | February 2, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | February 2, 2024 |

Tarek El Moussa, former star of the HGTV show Flip or Flop alongside his then-wife, Christina Hall, has written a memoir, Flip Your Life: How to Find Opportunity in Distress—in Real Estate, Business and Life, in which he details the highly publicized demise of their marriage.

El Moussa and Hall were married from 2009-2018, and Flip or Flop ran from 2013-2022, continuing after their divorce. In 2016, at the peak of their popularity, the couple was on the rocks, and El Moussa says his mental health was “at an all-time low,” so, after a fight with his wife, he “hopped over his backyard fence” and went for a walk through Chino Hills State Park behind their house, purportedly to “scout the trails for a couple of new mountain bikes he had just ordered,” with his .38-caliber pistol (which he says he had a concealed carry license for) in tow as an “insurance policy” against predators.

Hall must have been alarmed by her husband’s sudden armed departure because the next thing El Moussa knew, police were hovering over him in a helicopter, guns raised, ordering, “Get your hands in the air!” He says one of them recognized him from TV and shouted his name, took him home in handcuffs, and left him sitting on a cooler in the driveway for hours while they sorted everything out.

“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?” he writes. While talking to PEOPLE about the book he said, “I hold nothing against Christina. I understand why she did what she did. We had a lot of hard years through my sickness and my mental health struggles…I’ve never said any of this, ever.”

I was confused when I read this account, as I’m sure you are, dear reader. He says he understands why his wife was concerned and understands her actions, so that tells me that she called the police to go looking for him, but then he says the police only knew who he was when they recognized him from TV, but…if your wife called them…wouldn’t she have given them your name…otherwise…why would they be out looking for you?

El Moussa has been out of the spotlight for a while. These days we only see him when he briefly appears on Selling Sunset alongside his now wife, Heather Rae El Moussa, who made headlines when she revealed the tattoo she got in honor of her husband.

The book comes out February 6th, so maybe it will be more clear when we can read it word for word, but I don’t know, it sounds like even he’s not completely clear on what happened all these years later.