Truncate Without Breaking Words - PHP Implementation

Question

I need to truncate some news articles as a summary, about one paragraph 3-4 lines each without cutting the words off. I found this solution but I can't figure out how to implement it into my page.

How to Truncate a string in PHP to the word closest to a certain number of characters?

This is the summary section on the home page where it needs to truncate: News List Summary Screenshot

This is the full article-admin section that the above pulls the news from: Admin News Article Screenshot

Here is the PHP section using mb_substr(ucfirst((strip_tags($news->description, $allowed_tags = '<>'))), 0, 250, "UTF-8") which cuts off the words.

            <?php if ($this->wowmodule->getNewsStatus()): ?>
            <div class="uk-grid uk-grid-small uk-grid-match uk-child-width-1-1" data-uk-grid>
              <?php foreach ($NewsList as $news):?>
              <div>
                <a href="<?= base_url('news/'.$news->id) ;?>" title="<?= $this->lang->line('button_read_more'); ?>" >
                  <div class="uk-card uk-card-default news-card uk-card-hover uk-grid-collapse" uk-grid>
                    <div class="uk-width-1-4@s">
                      <img src="<?= base_url('assets/images/news/'.$news->image); ?>" alt="<?= $news->title ?>">
                    </div>
                    <div class="uk-width-2-3@s uk-card-body">
                      <h5 class="uk-h5 uk-text-bold uk-margin-small"><?= $news->title ?></h5>
                      <p class="news-description-text"><?= mb_substr(ucfirst((strip_tags($news->description, $allowed_tags = '<>'))), 0, 250, "UTF-8").' <span style="color:#f8bc51"> <br /><br /><b>Read More...</b></span>';  ?></p>
                    </div>
                  </div>
                </a>
              </div>
              <?php endforeach ?>
            </div>
            <?php endif ?>

Much appreciate any guidance,

Thanks.