I had to snap my trapped arm to escape crash that killed Jake – there was so much blood, says Towie’s Yazmin Oukhellou
TOWIE star Yazmin Oukhellou last night told how she deliberately broke her trapped arm to escape the car crash that killed her boyfriend.
She thought Jake McLean, 33, had survived their Mercedes going over a cliff in Turkey.
Yazmin, 28, said: “It was lay there and bleed to death, or snap my own arm to try to save us.”
The TV star had nodded off after partying with friends and woke to find their from a mountain road in Turkey.
She said: “We were just tumbling for what seemed like forever. It felt like I was going round in a washing machine — just round and round.
“Then eventually it stopped and my right arm was jammed.
READ MORE ON TOWIE TRAGEDY
“The car was upside down. It had an open sunroof and my right arm was just stuck behind my back and under the folded back of the car roof.
“I tried to honk the horn with my foot and I couldn’t do.”
Yazmin did not know it at the time, but the crash had opened an artery. She said: “I could just feel my arm absolutely covered in blood. It was like I was lying in a hot bath, there was so much around me.
“At the same time I was trying to wake up Jake.
Most read in Celebrity
“In my head I told myself, ‘OK, he’s just unconscious, I’m alive so he must be alive’.
“I didn’t want to admit it to myself that he could be dead.
“So I thought, ‘Right, I can either lay still and bleed to death, or snap my own arm to try to save us — I had no choice.
“So I somehow snapped my arm through pure adrenaline and panic. I climbed out of the car, and I was kind of holding my arm together with my left hand.
“I ran up to the top of the bank, I was screaming for help and then all of a sudden I saw a flashlight.
“I half thought, ‘Oh my God, am I hallucinating,’ because we were in the middle of nowhere. I thought I was seeing the light and I was dying. I just don’t know how I did it. I think it was just pure adrenaline, I barely thought.”
Yazmin added: “There was a man walking his dog and then he ran over. He took his top off for me and I wrapped it around my arm.
“Then I was like, ‘Don’t worry about me — let’s get down to my boyfriend, my boyfriend is down there.
“I climbed back down and tried to check his pulse but I couldn’t feel anything and then the ambulance came.
“They were helping me. I was like, ‘Please can you just help him’ and they were like, ‘We just need to take him to another hospital.’
“I think they knew, but for me even now I still feel like it’s not real. I still feel like I’m just waiting to wake up from a nightmare and it’s just something that never happens.”
Jake, 33, was declared dead while she was raced to hospital.
The couple had spent the night with pals at a club in Bodrum a fortnight ago.
Tearful Yazmin recalled: “Jake and I had been on and off for years. He was in Turkey with friends and I thought, ‘Do you know what? It’s only four hours away, I’ll go there on the Friday and get back to filming for the Tuesday and not tell anyone I’m even going there.’
“When I flew out we were off but we wanted to reconcile. I got there on the Friday at two in the morning, we had gone straight back and got to sleep, and then on Saturday we had the best day with our friends at a beach club.
“Then we had gone home, got dressed up and gone out for dinner at a bar and had the most amazing night.”
She sobbed: “Things were perfect — just as I’d hoped they would be.
“When we left the restaurant I wanted to go home, but our friends have got a villa there and he wanted to go back there.
CLIFF PLUNGE
“I was panicky, it was high up in the mountains, but he insisted — and I nodded off in the car. I was asleep and woke up to the car going off the cliff.
“Now I know that if I wasn’t asleep I probably wouldn’t have survived because the doctor said that meant my body was more relaxed.
“I severed an artery and a nerve, that’s why I bled so much. The doctors called me an angel, a miracle, because it’s a notorious spot and people have never survived. Now I’m just wondering how the hell did my partner die while I’ve survived? It’s made me look at life totally differently.
“I am definitely going to need therapy for a while, and I’m going to try some in-patient treatment too. I know this will live with me forever, I need to take it slowly.”
The grief and shock have left Yazmin needing to sleep side-by-side with her mum Lisa, who had flown out to Turkey immediately after the tragedy to be by her daughter’s hospital bedside. A family source said at the time: “Lisa is in absolute bits. She can’t speak to anyone.
“She is booked on the first flight she could get. She will go directly to the hospital from the airport.
“It’s any mum’s worst nightmare. All the family are pulling together and doing everything in their power to help right now.”
Yazmin expects it will be many months before she is confident enough to return to work.
This week she was pictured back in the UK for the first time, crying as she met pals at shops in Essex and recounted the experience.
Yazmin said: “I’m very up and down. One minute I’m OK and then I’m not, and I think that’s just what happens with grief.
“I’ve lost relatives before — I lost my nan last year who was close to me — but I have never lost someone who I loved in an intimate way. It’s very difficult.” The horror has also left her with permanent physical scarring and potentially in need of plastic surgery.
Doctors in the UK have warned she may never fully regain use of her right arm.
But she went on: “I could have been like Jake and not survived so I’m just very grateful and lucky that if that’s the worst case scenario, I will deal with it as best I can.
“The scarring that I have is awful so I will always have that as a reminder. But at least I’m still alive.” She continued “I’m staying away from social settings, I’ve stopped logging into social media, and I’ve changed my mobile number.
“For now, I just need to focus on getting well again and dealing with what has happened.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
Read More on The Sun
“Jake is the only person I have ever felt a love like that for and I think for me it’s going to be very, very difficult to get over this.
“This will stay with me for life. But for me, I loved him so hard and that’s why I travelled across the world to be with him.”
YAZMIN denied speculation that she had been rowing with Jake before the crash — or that booze was to blame.
YAZMIN denied speculation that she had been rowing with Jake before the crash — or that booze was to blame.
She said: “I’ve heard rumours we were arguing and things like that, but I couldn’t have wished for a more perfect situation for me and him.”
She added: “The police out there did a two-hour interview with me. They investigated the skid marks on the road.
"As far as I’m aware, the police report said the accident was really down to speeding.
"He took the corner too fast. Instead of going round the bend we went over.