‘Blue Bloods’ Actress Chanel Maya Banks Says She Was Never Missing and Assures Fans ‘I Am OK’

Former Blue Bloods actress Chanel Maya Banks says she was never missing after her family filed a missing person’s report with the Los Angeles Police Department on November 8.

Chanel, 36, was located safely in Texas on Monday, November 11 after family members claimed they hadn’t spoken to her since October 30. They told police they entered her apartment and found her belongings and dog, but no sign of Chanel. Authorities later did a welfare check at her apartment she shared with her husband before locating the actress in Texas.

The actress took to her verified Instagram account to update fans and assure them that she was safe. She explained that she met with police and “verified” that she was “OK.”

Chanel claimed in the post that she told her husband “six days ago that I was going to get baptized by one of my favorite pastors,” adding that he drove her to the airport, and she’d been gone for the past week. Chanel also said she “saw it as an opportunity to escape my cage.”

The actress appeared in three episodes of Gossip Girl as Sawyer Bennett in 2009. She also was featured in a 2010 episode of Blue Bloods. At the time, she acted under the name Chanel Farrell.

Chanel’s cousin, Danielle-Tori Singh, started a GoFundMe page about the search for Chanel, adding that she’d flown from Canada to Los Angeles to help find her. The page has since been taken down.

“What I saw was a woman who did not look like my cousin,” Singh said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “She was much skinnier, the woman in the body camera footage. She was wearing things that my cousin would not normally wear, and her voice was different. Her accent was different.”

She added, “Five days without hearing from my cousin is red flags and alarm bells. She doesn’t go more than 48 hours without speaking to me or her mom. That girl is more like a big sister to me.” However, Chanel claimed in her Instagram post that she hasn’t even spoken to her cousin in “15 years.” She also urged people not to donate to the GoFundMe page that her family had set up.

Chanel told the newspaper that she was looking to “distance” herself from her family and said she was “fine.”

The actress’ husband, Carlos Jimenez, reiterated what his wife had told the Times as well as what she had written on social media.

“She had decided she didn’t want to talk to the family anymore due to past issues that they had,” Carlos told Los Angeles TV news station KTLA in a separate phone interview on Wednesday, November 13.

The LAPD has closed Chanel’s case. No foul play is suspected in her disappearance.