Chanel Maya Banks, known for her appearances in Gossip Girl, has been found safe after being missing for two weeks.
The 36-year-old actor – who starred as Sawyer Bennett in season three of the hit drama series, as well as an appearance in Blue Bloods – has been “found safe and no foul play is suspected,” the Los Angeles Police Department told ABC News on Wednesday (November 13).
Officials said Banks was unharmed, though no further details were provided. The Independent has contacted the LAPD for comment.
Banks’s family initially reported the actor as missing on November 8, after they hadn’t seen or heard from her since October 30. Police conducted two welfare checks at her apartment in the Playa Vista area of Los Angeles on November 7 and November 8, but Banks was nowhere to be found.
Her cousin, Danielle-Tori Singh, and Banks’s mother later flew into Los Angeles and visited the apartment on November 10, where they noticed all of her belongings remained except for her phone and laptop. Both Banks’s dog and her car were left behind.
In a GoFundMe page organized by the actor’s cousin, Singh claimed it was unusual for Banks to go missing, saying she “does not go anywhere without her little dog” and “would never go anywhere without telling her mom or myself.”
Speaking to ABC7, Singh said she distributed missing person flyers in Banks’s neighborhood of Los Angeles. They had planned on using the GoFundMe donations to hire a private investigator and support themselves with accommodation and transport during their search.
“I can tell you in my soul, in my gut, something is not right,” she told ABC7. “We’re crossing two weeks now without a word, without a sound. Nothing.”
Elsewhere in the GoFundMe page, Singh accused Banks’s husband of more than one year of being “uncooperative” during the search. She claimed to ABC7 that he was “not willing to help LAPD” and had been “removing flyers off of posts and cars.”
The GoFundMe page reads: “We asked him where is Chanel, and all he continues to say is, ‘She does not want to be found, she will reach out when she’s ready.’
“He claims he does not know where she is, he says he hasn’t seen or heard from her since November 7, but never called police to say she’s gone.”
Banks, who also performed under the name Chanel Farrell, appeared in the 2010 Joel Schumacher film Twelve, starring Chace Crawford and Rory Culkin. She has pivoted from acting to writing in recent years.
