“A car just went through my neighbor’s house.”
That’s the first thing a neighbor told the 911 operator after actor Anne Heche crashed her car into a home on South Walgrove Avenue in Mar Vista on Aug. 5.
The shocking audio published Tuesday by TMZ reveals the first moments after the crash, as onlookers try to assess the damage wrought. Neighbors can be heard screaming in the background of the call as the house catches fire and they realize a woman is trapped in the blue Mini Cooper.
“The car went all the way into the house?” the operator asks the man who placed the call.
“Yes, like 10 feet into the house,” the man responds. He adds that the car was going “very fast” because it made it into the second room of the house.
The caller becomes more anxious as he realizes a fire has broken out, making it impossible for him to reach Heche in the car.
“Can you safely get next to that person that’s in the car?” the operator asks him.
“There’s a fire. There’s a fire,” the man responds.
The operator tells him to get out of the house and make sure everyone else can get out, then asks if it’s possible to get the person trapped in the car out.
“No,” the man responds. “It’s a big fire.”
The fire burning in the home took 59 firefighters more than an hour to extinguish fully. No one in the home was injured.
Heche was declared legally dead on Friday.
A law enforcement source told The Times that a blood test showed Heche had cocaine in her system after the crash.
Heche, who was 53, was being treated at the Grossman Burn Center before she died.
“The news of Anne Heche passing is devastating,” said Lynne Mishele, the woman whose house Heche crashed into, in an Instagram video. “Her family and her friends and her children especially really have suffered a great loss, and my heart goes out for them. This entire situation is tragic, and there really are just no words.”