Orlando Brown, one of the stars of the Disney Channel’s That’s So Raven, has been missing since Tuesday morning according to his manager, Ricky Romance. Brown, 20, left Romance’s house around 10:30 in the morning to run to a 7-Eleven and never came back. No one has seen or heard from him since then, and everyone says it’s very out of character for him.
Orlando Brown of TV’s That’s So Raven has been missing since early Tuesday morning, PEOPLE has learned exclusively. The 20-year-old reportedly left his manager’s house around 10:20 a.m. to make a quick trip to 7-Eleven and has not been seen since. According to Brown’s publicist, Elayne Rivers, he had a full day of meetings and appointments in preparation for a photo shoot Wednesday.
Rivers adds that friends and family are very concerned, as the young actor is not one to be out of touch for long, and the convenience store was within a short walking distance from his manager’s home in Studio City.
Ricky Romance, Brown’s close friend and manager, has been calling all local hospitals and posting MySpace bulletins repeatedly, hoping someone somewhere might have seen or heard something about his whereabouts.
[From People]
Orlando has several upcoming projects, including a spin-off from That’s So Raven and an album with guest singers like Sean Kingston and Akon. Though People and most of the other media sources fail to mention it, Brown was arrested on April 10th for drug possession in Houston. He was pulled over after driving without his lights. Police searched his car and found nine grams of marijuana. Orlando claimed he was driving a friend’s car and didn’t know there was pot in the vehicle.
“Because I have some friends I hang around and I chose to overlook the things that they do because I have a heart, and I apologize sincerely to my fans, but this time the company that I kept got me.”
[From Wikipedia]
The arrest is probably just a coincidence – it’s not like getting arrested for pot is the biggest celebrity infraction these days. Hopefully Brown is safe and will turn up in the next few days.
Here’s Brown’s mugshot from his April 10th arrest. Header of Orlando at the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York on August 3, 2004. Images thanks to PR Photos.
Note by Celebitchy: This story seems suspect to me for a few reasons. First, the guy has been missing for just over 24 hours, as Crazy Days and Nights points out. He’s an adult - how does that make him missing? Second, Ricky Romance is the one sounding the alarm and he did the same thing in December. He claimed his brother Raz-B was missing after he recanted molestation allegations against Chris Stokes in that B2K molestation scandal that mysteriously went away with everyone forgiving and forgetting.
Also, I went to Ricky Romance’s blog on his MySpace, which People Magazine links to, and it’s set up totally misleadingly. There is no story that Orlando Brown is missing. It just says “{Ricky Romance} Orlando Brown is Missing!!!!!!!!!!’s Latest Blog Entry [Subscribe to this Blog]” with the Subscribe part as a link to subscribe - but there’s no story about it. He changed the title of the blog to get people to think it was a link to the story and subscribe. The blog is all promotion for his artists.
Maybe this Ricky Romance guy just freaks out whenever he can’t contact a friend for a while, and it could be legitimate that he’s missing. If so, I hope it’s just a misunderstanding and that he’s found ok. It sure seems fishy to me though.
Update by Celebitchy: Commenters on Sandra Rose’s site note: “He just called into the Wendy William’s Experience. And the first thing he mentioned that he has an album coming out. So I think it was all a publicity stunt!!!”
Update 2 by Celebitchy: Of course this guy was found. He released a statement saying he “needed to be alone” and went on to add how dissapointed he was that he got dropped from a scheduled show:
“It was wrong for me not to inform my manager … about my whereabouts, especially when I am usually so routine and big on communication, but I felt a little lost and needed to get away,” Brown said in a statement released Wednesday by his publicist, Elayne Rivers.
Brown went on to say he was upset at “how we as entertainers are so disrespected at times” after an incident at a nightclub where he had expected to open for the headlining act.
“I felt that that was my chance to prove that I was talented and I was really excited,” Brown said. “When I was told that I couldn’t perform… that really hurt. … It got a bit overwhelming and I needed to be alone.”
[AP via Huffington Post]
To People, Brown’s publicist added “It was not a hoax.” Mmmhmm.
