1766 Walgrove Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90066
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Author: Jewls Krueger
On the morning of August 5, 2022, Emmy winning actress Anne Heche crashed her blue Mini Cooper into a small home in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles at high speed, triggering a fire that destroyed the house and trapped Heche in the wreckage. She died from her injuries six days later at the age of 53.
Anne Celeste Heche was born on May 25, 1969 in Aurora, Ohio. She rose to fame in the early 1990s as a young actress on the soap opera "Another World," for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991. Through the late 1990s and early 2000s she starred in a string of major Hollywood films, including "Donnie Brasco," "Six Days Seven Nights," "Wag the Dog," and the 1998 remake of "Psycho."
Heche was equally well known for her personal life. She was in a high profile relationship with comedian Ellen DeGeneres from 1997 to 2000, and was the mother of two sons, Homer Laffoon and Atlas Heche Tupper. By 2022, she had largely transitioned to independent film and television work, including a starring role in the series "Chicago P.D." and the podcast "Better Together."
Further Reading
The house Heche crashed into was a small, one story rental property in the 1800 block of South Walgrove Avenue in Mar Vista, a quiet residential neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles, just inland from Venice and Marina del Rey. The home was a long term rental occupied by a woman named Lynne Mishele, who was inside the house with her two dogs and a pet tortoise at the time of the crash. Miraculously, neither Mishele nor her animals were injured.
Shortly before 11 a.m. on August 5, 2022, Heche first struck the garage of an apartment complex in Mar Vista. Witnesses approached the car to help, but she put the Mini Cooper into reverse and sped off. A surveillance camera nearby captured her car speeding down the narrow residential street at an estimated 60 miles per hour.
Moments later, Heche's car blew through bushes and slammed into Mishele's home on South Walgrove Avenue, coming to rest deep inside the structure. The impact ruptured a gas line and ignited a massive fire that quickly engulfed both the car and the home. Nearly 60 Los Angeles Fire Department personnel responded to the scene. According to LAFD records, it took roughly 45 minutes from the time crews arrived for them to extricate Heche from the burning wreckage, due to the intensity of the fire.
When she was finally pulled out, paramedics initially placed her on a stretcher and partially covered her with a sheet. In a moment captured on video by news helicopters, Heche suddenly sat up on the stretcher before being lowered back down. She was transported to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and later transferred to the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital.
Interested in seeing the Anne Heche Crash Site in person? Take the tour →
The scene on August 6, 2022 - Copyright Morbid Tourism
Heche never regained consciousness. She suffered first and second degree burns over a significant portion of her body, along with a sternal fracture and severe anoxic brain injury caused by oxygen deprivation while she was trapped in the car during the fire. On August 11, 2022, she was declared legally brain dead. Her family kept her on life support for several additional days to enable organ donation, and she was removed from life support on August 14.
The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner ruled her death an accident, with the official cause listed as inhalation and thermal injuries. The final toxicology report, released in December 2022, found benzoylecgonine, an inactive metabolite of cocaine, in her blood, indicating prior use but not active impairment. Fentanyl detected in her urine was attributed to medication administered at the hospital after the crash. The coroner concluded there was no evidence of impairment by illicit substances or alcohol at the time of the crash. The exact cause of the crash was never determined.
The home Heche crashed into was so severely damaged that it had to be demolished, leaving an empty lot in its place for some time after the crash. A GoFundMe organized by the property's owners for renter Lynne Mishele raised more than $178,000 to help her rebuild her life. The lot has since been redeveloped.
The site sits in a quiet, residential pocket of Mar Vista just east of Venice, with single family homes lining both sides of the street. Please be respectful of the current residents and the surrounding neighborhood, stay on public roads and walkways at all times, and do not trespass.
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