New details of actor Anne Heche's fiery crash
A man who witnessed actress Anne Heche’s fiery car crash in Los Angeles has described the life-threatening incident as “horrific” and revealed he could “hardly breathe” while trying to help the trapped star.
Lynne Bernstein said he and his wife saw a car driving down their street at a “high rate of speed” before his wife heard Heche’s car crash into their neighbour’s house.
Bernstein, who tried to assist Heche out of her blue Mini Cooper, said the flames and smoke made it “hard to breathe”, telling Fox News Digital that Heche was “conscious” but that he didn’t know how “coherent” she was.
“The smoke was just getting way too intense, we could hardly breathe,” Bernstein said. “The smoke was making it hard to breathe.”
Bernstein added that the tenant whose home Heche crashed into left her house from a side room and was “shocked” at what had happened, telling a group of people to “get out of my house” before realising what had happened.
According to Bernstein, another neighbour, Dave Manpearl, asked Heche if she was alright and she rescinded that she wasn’t.
Manpeal, who also attempted to rescue Heche from the burning car, exited when flames overtook it, telling the Daily Mail he was “positive” that she was dead.
“I was positive that the driver was dead. That she had burned up,” he said “It took at least 30 minutes for the fire department to douse the flames, extract the car and pull her out of the car.”
Heche was then transported to a hospital in critical condition, according to emergency responders.
A second witness told Fox News Digital the crash “scared the entire neighbourhood”. Yaroslav Borets added that these types of accidents don’t often occur in their neighbourhood.
“Something we will remember for a long time,” he said.
“This is generally a safe place.”
In a statement, the Los Angeles Fire Department said the vehicle had a single occupant when it crashed into a two-storey home built in 1952, and that the occupant was taken to a local hospital by paramedics.
“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 read.
According to FOX 11, no other injuries were reported and the cause of the crash is still under investigation.
It has also emerged that Heche joked about drinking vodka and chasing it down with wine on an episode of her podcast that was released on the day of the crash - which has since been removed from the internet.
Heche and her co-host Heather Duffy spoke about drinking vodka supplied by a podcast sponsor and chasing it with white wine, with Heche opening up about having a “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 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.”
Image: Getty Images