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Just a mistake? Drake Bell addressed his recent mysterious disappearance — and claimed it was nothing more than a simple misunderstanding.
“You leave your phone in the car and don’t answer for the night and this?” Bell, 36, tweeted on Thursday, April 13, alongside a crying laughing emoji. The post comes just hours after Daytona Police revealed that the Nickelodeon alum had been found after being reported as “missing.”
“We can confirm law enforcement officials are in contact and Mr. Bell is safe,” the police wrote via their official Facebook on Thursday. The DBPD has previously issued a statement searching for the whereabouts of Bell, whose “last known location is potentially the area of Mainland High School on 4/12/2023 just before 9 p.m.” The Drake and Josh alum, who was “considered missing and endangered,” was advised to be “traveling in a 2022 grey BMW” at the time.
While Bell had a successful career as a child actor in programs including as The Amanda Show and Drake and Josh (alongside Josh Peck) he has since made headlines for his worrisome behavior in recent years.
In 2021, the California native was subject to two years probation and 200 hours of community service in connection to his high-profile child endangerment case. The “Found a Way” singer pled guilty to two counts of attempted endangering children and disseminating matter harmful to juveniles in 2017.
“I just want to say today that I accept this claim because my conduct was wrong,” Bell said during his sentencing. “I’m sorry that the victim was harmed in any way, but that was obviously not my intention. I take this matter very seriously, and again I just want to apologize to her and anyone else who may have been affected by my actions.”
That same month the actor welcomed a son with then-wife Janet Von Schmeling. The pair were together for five years but split in January, just several weeks after Us Weekly obtained photos of Bell appearing to huff balloons in the car with his child. (Von Schmeling shared and then deleted an Instagram post about their “separation” in November 2022.)
“Drake pulled up in the driveway at his house [in Los Angeles] and started to inflate a pink balloon that was in his lap. He inhaled it … [until] the balloon was deflated,” an eyewitness exclusively told Us in December 2022, noting that the A Fairly Odd Movie star seemingly continued to repeat the action “six or seven times” over the course of 30 minutes. “Eventually he got out and went into his house, then he came back out and got his kid out of the rear child seat and carried him in.”
Bell has also publicly feuded with his former costars, particularly Beck, 36, who called the Superhero Movie actor’s child endangerment case “upsetting” and “disappointing” in a statement to Variety in 2021.
After Bell publicly slammed the How I Met Your Father star in 2017 for not inviting him to his wedding to Paige O’Brien, Peck opened up about the incident during a March 2022 episode of the “BFFs” podcast.
“I am getting married that night and I see these text messages from him like cursing me out and coming for me. On the night of my wedding,” he recalled, revealing that he made Bell apologize to his wife at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards. “It’s delusional because it is like, ‘Bro, it is like we worked at Coffee Bean together when we were 16. I am sorry that I am 31 now and I might have lost your number.’”
Bell, however, disagreed with Peck’s recollection of events, saying he was “bugged” by the Turner & Hooch alum saying the twosome “weren’t friends” and claimed the duo had been in touch over the years.
“We’ve had our ups and downs. We’ve had times when we wanted to kill each other. We were like brothers. I know Josh and I’m closer to Josh than I am to own brothers,” he said on his own podcast, “Drake & Janet,” at the time.
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