Actress Anne Heche is in a coma after an accident at her home, a spokesman says

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Actress Anne Heche is in a coma after an accident at her home, a spokesman says

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Actress Anne Heche has been placed in a coma and is in “extremely critical condition,” days after she drove her car into a Los Angeles home and both burst into flames, a representative told news outlets on Monday.

“She has a significant lung injury that requires mechanical ventilation and burns that require surgical intervention,” Michael McConnell, a representative for Heche, told Reuters and other news outlets. “She is in a coma and has not regained consciousness since shortly after the accident.”

Around 10:55 a.m. Friday, a car crashed into a home in the Mar Vista neighborhood, causing a “severe fire,” the Los Angeles Fire Department said. Heche, 53, was pulled from the car, a Mini Cooper, and taken to a hospital.

According to the fire department, it took 59 firefighters and 65 minutes to extinguish the blaze, which caused extensive damage.

A woman was inside the home during the crash but was not injured, CNN reported. A GoFundMe campaign was set up for the woman who, according to the fundraiser’s statement, “lost her entire life to possessions.”

The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating the circumstances of the accident, including the possibility that Heche may have been driving under the influence of the vehicle, police spokeswoman Norma Eisenman confirmed to the Washington Post. A search warrant for the actress’ blood was obtained on the day of the incident, Eisenman said. As of early Tuesday, Heche had not been charged with any crime.

Heche representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.

Heche’s acting career began after appearing on the soap opera Another World from the 1980s and later starring in films such as Donnie Brasco and Six Days Seven Nights. She dated Ellen DeGeneres for three and a half years beginning in the late 1990s, in a relationship that garnered significant public attention.

Shortly before the crash on Friday, around 10:35 a.m., Heche bought a wig at a salon in Venice, the salon’s owner Richard Glass told the Los Angeles Times. . On Instagram he posted a photo with a smiling heche.

TMZ reported that Heche drove her vehicle into an apartment building’s garage that same morning. The media outlet has obtained video showing her detaching herself after the collision, although the footage is not time-stamped.

Surveillance footage from 10:53 a.m. that day, obtained by CBSLA and TMZ, shows Heche’s blue Mini Cooper speeding through Mar Vista just before crashing into the home, the outlets said.

David Manpearl, a neighbor of the destroyed house, told the Times he was at his desk on Friday morning when he saw a car speed past his window. Shortly thereafter he heard a crash. Manpearl ran out of his house and down the street where he saw a car drive through the front of his neighbor’s house and wedged itself in the back wall, he told the Times. As he walked inside, he saw a barefoot resident in the middle of her kitchen asking for help with her pets, he told the newspaper.

“She couldn’t move because the ceiling had fallen, so there was all sorts of debris everywhere,” Manpearl said, adding that he was helping the resident of the house to get to safety – and was trying to help Heche.

“It got to a point where there was fire everywhere. It was all around us,” Manpearl told the Times. “It had spread from the car to the house and the smoke was thickening. I always hoped the fire brigade was there but they weren’t there yet and I ended up having to leave the house for my own safety.”

Heche was transported to the hospital with serious injuries CBSLA reports The wrecked blue Mini Cooper was later pulled from the home.

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