Tarek El Moussa is a highly successful HGTV star today, but as a teenager, he led a much different life—that landed him in jail for attempted murder.
The now 42-year-old has never shied away from admitting his dark past. He’s been open about having a criminal history and about his addiction issues. But in his new memoir called Flip Your Life: How to Find Opportunity in Distress—in Real Estate, Business, and Life, which drops on Feb. 6, he went into shocking details.
In an expert shared with PEOPLE, El Moussa admitted to being involved in a gang while in high school and explained a near-death experience that finally got him on a straighter path.
That experience came when he was a sophomore. While he had promised his parents he would be in the audience to watch his girlfriend graduate one night, he decided to skip the event to help his vengeful friend.
“A guy I knew learned that his girlfriend had started dating someone else,” he recalled. “I can’t remember all the details of this Romeo-and-Juliet story, but the guy was heartbroken and furious. Word got out, and soon both sides—my friend’s, and the rival boyfriend’s—decided that scores must be settled, immediately. Later that afternoon, about fifteen of us went to a local park, ready to fight the rival boyfriend and his friends with our fists…or so I assumed.”
When he got to the park, he was greeted by two SUVs filled with men carrying baseball bats and crowbars. Tarek El Moussa realized the situation made a dangerous turn, but he convinced himself his gang outnumbered the others. So he didn’t back down.
Tarek El Moussa Believes the Police Saved His Life
Once the fight started, an older man swung a bat and broke El Moussa’s ribs. El Moussa knocked the bat out of the man’s hand, grabbed it, and swung back. He hit the man in the head and knocked him unconscious.
“There were bodies everywhere,” he continued. “But then, across the park, I saw that a ‘second wave’ was gathering. And these weren’t teenage boys; these were the older brothers of the guys we had just fought with… And they were running at me with crowbars. I was seventeen, and in that moment, I was all alone. That’s when the police pulled up and saved my life.”
Officers arrested Tarek El Moussa and charged him “with assault and battery, aggravated assault, attempted murder, and assault with a deadly weapon.” His parents immediately hired an attorney, who was able to prove that El Moussa acted in self-defense, and the charges were dropped.
“Today I’m convinced that the police arrived at exactly the right moment,” he noted. “If I hadn’t been arrested, I would have been killed.”
El Moussa’s life turned around after that. A doctor started him on ADHD medication, which quelled his “impulsivity.” He went from a C-average to a 3.8 by the time he graduated. And while it took years longer to get the dosage correct, he’s “deeply grateful for it.”
“It’s part of my story,” he told the publication. “We’re all a product of our environment, and I grew up in that environment. In order to thrive in that environment, you have to do certain things.”
“That’s why I shared what I shared,” he added. “[To show] you can literally be a gang banger right now, robbing people, and you can flip your life. Anybody can change. They just have to want to.”