UPDATE: O’Connor has been found safe, according to CNN.
Grammy-winning Irish singer Sinead O’Connor is reportedly missing and is feared to be suicidal.
According to USA Today, Chicago police sent out a “check for well being” alert after the 49-year-old singer, who has a history of mental illness, went out for a bike ride at 6 am Sunday morning and did not return. She has reportedly not been seen since.
The contents of the alert, reported by TMZ, describe O’Connor as wearing a black parka, black leather pants and a sweatshirt with the word “Ireland” printed on the back. The singer is reported to have been riding on a Raleigh motorized bike with a pink basket affixed to the front.
The alert describes the singer as “missing suicidal.”
O’Connor posted a cryptic message to her Facebook page shortly after she was last seen:
https://www.facebook.com/sineadoconnor/posts/1103835822988738
Irish authorities began a search for O’Connor in November after the “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer posted a message on Facebook that appeared to be a suicide note. At the time, O’Connor wrote that she had “taken an overdose” because there was “no other way to get respect.”
“I’m invisible,” the singer wrote then. “I don’t matter a shred to anyone. No one has come near me. I’ve died a million times already with the pain of it. So yeah.. Strangers like me.. But my family don’t value me at all. They wouldn’t know if I was dead until weeks from now if I wasn’t f*cking informing them now.”
O’Connor was later found safe by Irish authorities and was reported to have received medical treatment.
The singer has spoken often about her battle with mental illness; in 2007, she told Oprah Winfrey that she previously attempted to take her own life on her 33rd birthday.
O’Connor won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Performance in 1991.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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