Towie’s Yazmin Oukhellou recounts breaking own arm to escape car crash that killed boyfriend Jake McLean

McLean, 33, died after the car went off a cliff

Yasmin Oukhellou (Beretta/Sims/Shutterstock)

The Only Way is Essex star Yazmin Oukhellou has revealed she had to “snap” her own arm to escape the wreckage of a car accident that killed her boyfriend Jake McLean.

Mr McLean died in the crash earlier this month after his car went over a cliff in Bodrum, Turkey, as the couple returned from a night out.

In a new interview, Ms Oukhellou, 28, explained that Mr McLean was driving and she was asleep in the passenger seat.

She toldThe Sun it felt like the car was “just tumbling for what seemed like forever” and she felt like she was “going round in a washing machine”.

Ms Oukhellou added: “Then eventually it stopped and my right arm was jammed.

“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 it.”

She said that, unbeknown to her at the time, she had severed an artery and could feel her arm “absolutely covered in blood”, giving her the sensation of “lying in a hot bath”.

Jake McLean and Yazmin Oukhellou were in an on-off relationship (Instagram)

“At the same time I was trying to wake up Jake,” Ms Oukhellou recalled. “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 to myself that he could be dead.

“So I thought: ‘Right, I can either lie 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 to the top of the bank. I was screaming for help and then all of a sudden I saw a flashlight.”

She said she came across a man walking his dog, who helped her by wrapping his top around her arm.

Ms Oukhellou said she clambered down to the car, checked Mr McLean’s pulse and couldn’t feel anything.

Mr McLean, 33, was declared dead while Ms Oukhellou was taken to hospital.

The pair had had an on-and-off relationship for years. She was in Turkey, where he had been away with friends, in an effort to reconcile with him.

Ms Oukhellou said that she was lucky she was asleep when the crash happened because, as her body was more relaxed, it helped her to survive the impact.

“The doctors called me an angel, a miracle, because it’s a notorious spot and people have never survived,” she said.