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Lost Aussie TV star found in ‘gangster flats’
Frank Thorne, in Sydney05.06.09
A missing Australian soap opera actress was found by police cowering in a block of flats allegedly used by Hell's Angels gangsters after emergency services were told armed gunmen were on the loose.
Home and Away star Jodi Gordon, 24, was already at the centre of a police search in Sydney after her family had reported her missing after a night out with friends in Kings Cross.
Armed police cordoned off the area when they were called to the apartment in wealthy Bellevue Hill by a resident who said gunmen were trying to break in.
Five men — at least two of them with guns — were in his back yard and trying to scale his balcony, the man claimed.
The report sparked a massive police response in the wake of recent Sydney motorcycle gang violence, which has seen a series of revenge attacks after a man was battered to death in a brawl at Sydney airport .
Gordon and the male resident, 29, were found hiding in a bedroom. She told police she had seen the gunmen on CCTV cameras that surround the flat.
But when police viewed the footage they could only see the male resident in the back yard and no gunmen. The man declined to be interviewed but Gordon accompanied police officers to a local police station, where she allegedly disclosed the couple had used cocaine during the day.
Confronted with CCTV proof that nothing had occurred, the man allegedly conceded he could have been hallucinating and said he had also taken Stilnox, a sleeping tablet.
The actress's father Ray Gordon said he received a call from Kings Cross police to say his daughter's boyfriend, media heir Ryan Stokes, 29, had reported her missing after a night out with friends in Sydney's red-light district.
He said he and his wife Bronwyn rushed to the city to search for her. On the way, they received a call from Rose Bay police telling them she had been found.
