Troubled singer Sinead turns up safe after bike ride mystery
SINGER Sinead O’Connor was found safe and well last night after sparking a police alert over her safety.
The Irish star was reported missing after failing to return from a bike ride on Sunday morning.
Authorities had feared the 49-yearold star, from Dublin, was in a suicidal state.
A police department official in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette, Illinois, where she vanished, said: “Sinead O’Connor has been found and she is safe and ok.”
Officers were called in to “check the well-being” of the singer after an unidentified caller reported her missing. She had taken off on a Raleigh motorised bicycle with a pink basket.
The singer shot to stardom with her 1990 song Nothing Compares 2 U, written by Prince, which topped the charts in the UK and the US.
Sinead, who has had a public battle with mental health, posted what was feared to be a suicide note last November.
She claimed then she had taken an overdose because of her family’s “cruelty”. She was found safe and received medical help.
Shortly before she vanished on Sunday Sinead posted a confused message on Facebook about her 12-year-old son Shane, who has been placed with the Tusla child services agency in Ireland.
She wrote: “I had reasoned this out of my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one I would have the other.’
Despair
She also posted a message that seemed to be directed at her eldest son, Jake Reynolds, 28, and Shane’s father Donal Lunny.
The mother-of-four wrote: “Jake, kindly go to the court on Tuesday and take custody [of] your brother from Tusla. My lawyer will be making the illegal way yourself and Donal got him into Tusla (lying to the cops etc) known to the judge.”
“Expect to be in trouble. In fact you’d best bring a lawyer of your own. And do not abandon your brother or any other of my babies again. What you have done to your brother and your mother is LITERALLY criminal.”
In November Sinead wrote that Reynolds had caused her despair.
She rose to fame in the 1980s with her debut album The Lion And The Cobra. She released 10 albums but never again reached the heights of Nothing Compares 2 U.
She has been involved in a number of outbursts including ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II on television in 1992. She was protesting about the Catholic church’s handling of the child abuse scandal.
In 2012 she said she had suffered a “very serious breakdown” when she cancelled a world tour.
Just last week Sinead alleged US comedian Arsenio Hall had supplied drugs to rock star Prince, who died last month, and had spiked her drink in the past. Hall denied the allegation and is now suing her for $5million. Sinead was married to record producer John Reynolds and had Jake in 1987. Then she was married to British journalist Nick Sommerlad from 2001 to 2004. She wed musician Steve Cooney in July 2010 but they split up the following March.
O’Connor gave birth to daughter Roisin in 1995 by Irish writer John Waters, then had Shane in 2004 during her relationship with Donal Lunny.
Her fourth child, son Yeshua, was born in 2006 following a year-long relationship with American surgeon Frank Bonadio. She is also a grandmother. She is currently married to counsellor Barry Herridge whom she wed in 2011.