An eyewitness to actress Anne Heche’s life-threatening car accident in Los Angeles shared new details on the crash with Fox News Digital today.
It has also emerged that Heche had joked about drinking vodka with wine chasers in an episode of her podcast that was published online on the day of the crash – and has since been scrubbed from the internet.
Heche complains of ‘very bad day’ on podcast
Heche complained of having a “bad day” and told listeners she was drinking vodka and wine in the latest episode of her podcast, published online just hours before her crash and since removed from the internet.
It’s not clear when the podcast was recorded. She and co-host Heather Duffy both speak of drinking free vodka provided by them by a podcast sponsor and washing it down with white wine, while Heche opens up about having had a “very bad day.”
“I don’t know what happened, sometimes days just suck and I don’t know if you ever have them [but] some days, those no good, very bad days, and some days just end up like this,” Heche told listeners.
“Sometimes days just suck and I don’t know if you ever have them, but you know some days, Mama says just gonna be like this. Some days there’s those no good, very bad days,” she continued.
Witness describes ‘horrific’ scenes
A witness to Heche’s crash, Lynne Bernstein, detailed the crash as “horrific” and said he could “hardly breathe” when trying to assist Heche out of the blue Mini Cooper she was driving.
“The smoke was just getting way too intense, we could hardly breathe,” Bernstein said. “The smoke was making it difficult to see.”
Bernstein said that he and his wife witnessed a car going down their street at a “high rate of speed” before his wife heard Heche’s car crash into their neighbor’s house.
Bernstein noted that his neighbor, Dave Manpearl, asked Heche if she was alright and she responded that she was not. The Los Angeles Fire Department arrived on the scene, asked the neighbors if anyone was in the house and they alerted the first responders that a woman was inside.
The tenant of the house exited her home from a side room and was “shocked” by what had happened. “Get out of my house,” the tenant told the group of people outside her home before she realized a car had struck her home from her.
Dave took the tenant’s two dogs to his home. Bernstein noted that the tenant was “perfectly fine, thank God” following the explosive crash.
Bernstein shared with Fox News Digital that Heche was “conscious” but he did not know how “coherent” she was following the crash.
Manpearl exited the car when flames overtook it.
“I was positive that the driver was dead,” he told the Daily Mail “That she had burned up. It took at least 30 minutes for the fire department to douse the flames, extract the car from her and pull her out of the car.
Heche crashed a vehicle into a Mar Vista, California, home, Friday, igniting a fire, and was transported to a hospital in critical condition, according to emergency responders.
A resident was present at the time of the accident at the home and escaped injury. Heche, however, sustained burn injuries and was “conscious and breathing” when she was placed on a stretcher.
A second witness spoke with Fox News Digital outside the homeowner’s home where the damage from the crash is clearly seen.
The crash “scared the entire neighborhood,” Yaroslav Borets told Fox News Digital. “Something we will remember for a long time.” Borets noted that his neighborhood of him is “not the kind neighborhood that knows everyone next door.”
“This is generally a safe place,” he said, explaining that this type of accident doesn’t often occur in the Mar Vista neighborhood.
Brian Humphrey, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Fire Department, told Fox News Digital the person involved in the accidents was transferred to a hospital in critical condition.
The Los Angeles Fire Department shared a statement saying the vehicle had a single occupant when it rammed into a two-storey home built in 1952.
“Fifty-nine firefighters took 65 minutes to access, confine and fully extinguish the stubborn flames within the heavily damaged structure and rescued one female adult found within the vehicle who has been taken to an area hospital by LAFD Paramedics in critical condition,” the statement said.
No other injuries were reported, and the cause of the crash is under investigation, according to FOX 11.
Heche, who has admitted to using drugs and alcohol in the past, famously dated Ellen DeGeneres from 1997 to 2000, the NY Post reported.
After their relationship ended, a shaken and disoriented Heche drove to Fresno and knocked on the door of a stranger. She was briefly hospitalized after the incident.
Heche has said in past interviews that she was molested by her father, Don Heche, from the time she was a toddler to age 12. Don Heche died of AIDS in 1983 and Anne has said he lived a double life as a closet homosexual.
Heche’s brother Nathan died in a car crash three months after the death of their father, which Anne has suggested was a suicide.
This story originally appeared on Page Six and is republished here with permission.
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