Flip or Flop alum Tarek El Moussa opened up about the last time he and ex-wife Christina Hall (née Haack) were “together as a family” after she called 911 following a 2016 argument. 

Tarek, 42, recalled in his upcoming book, Flip Your Life: How to Find Opportunity in Distress — in Real Estate, Business and Life, that he “went out to [their] backyard in Yorba Linda and hopped over the fence” after a heated exchange with Christina, 40. “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, noting that he was carrying a .38-caliber pistol for protection against wildlife. 

“I heard an officer shout, ‘Tarek?’ I screamed back, ‘Yes! I’m the guy from TV! What are you guys doing?’” an excerpt shared by People on Wednesday, January 31, read. “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?’”

The incident took place in May 2016 when authorities arrived at the former couple’s Orange County, California, home after receiving a call about a “possibly suicidal male with a gun.” The Flipping 101 star reportedly told officers he had “no intention of hurting himself” and dropped the weapon when instructed to do so. 

Tarek later called the ordeal a “huge misunderstanding on [Christina’s] part.” “I have a CCW, California Concealed Carry, which means I can legally carry a firearm. I live in the canyons where there’s wildlife and bobcats and mountain lions and I literally went on a hike,” he told Dr. Oz in April 2018.

“The next thing I know there’s a sheriff’s helicopter circling and I’m like, ‘Geez, what are these guys doing?’ and I’m like, ‘They must be looking for somebody bad.’ Then I realize, ‘Well, wait a minute he was looking for me,’ and next thing I know I see 11 sheriffs around me and off-road vehicles and guns on me,” he added.

Tarek and Christina – who share daughter Taylor and son Brayden – announced their split in December 2016, with the Flipping El Moussas star filing for divorce one month later.

“Everybody gave up on me: the magazines, the outlets, the network, nobody believed in me,” he told People in January about the dark time in his life following their divorce, calling the period “physical and emotional hell.” 

Christina moved on with now-ex-husband Ant Anstead and welcomed son Hudson in 2019. Following their divorce, she married Josh Hall in 2022. Tarek found love again with Selling Sunset star Heather Rae Young. The two tied the knot in 2021 and welcomed son Tristan in January 2023.