Tarek El Moussa Details Gun Incident That Led to Christina Hall Split

An unfortunate misunderstanding involving Tarek El Moussa once led to a standoff with police.

The 2016 incident, which occurred shortly before his breakup with then-wife Christina Hall, is one of the difficult subjects the HGTV star addresses in his new book, Flip Your Life.

“It was a very scary situation,” Tarek recalled in an exclusive interview with E! News’ Francesca Amiker. “For me, I was just blowing off steam.”

In May 2016, TMZ—citing law enforcement—reported that police had responded to a call of a “possibly suicidal male with a gun.” Per an incident report obtained by E! News at the time, Christina “was crying and shaking” when authorities arrived to their former Orange County home and said Tarek “took a handgun, put it in his backpack and ran outside.”

Looking back, Tarek now understands Christina’s point of view. But at the time, as he recalled to E!, “I had just bought mountain bikes and we had all these trails behind our house.”