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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

TV actor kidnapped, forced to smoke drugs

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 06/18/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

IN the most bizarre celebrity news story we've heard in months, former Party of Five star Jeremy London was kidnapped and held hostage for five hours last Thursday, reports Radar Online.

On June 10, the 37-year-old actor was changing a flat tire on his car in Palm Springs when two men stopped, ostensibly to help him. But once the task was finished, the two men forced London back into his car and drove him around for several hours, holding him at gunpoint.

"He told officers that he was forced to smoke dope (i.e. crack cocaine or amphetamines) and then purchase booze and hand it out in a gang area of Palm Springs," said Sgt. Douglas of the Palm Springs Police Department.

(Does Palm Springs have a "gang area?" We thought it was all old people and spa resorts.)

Luckily for London, he managed to escape his captors around 3 a.m. the following day.

"Jeremy said it was a terrorizing experience," a source close to London said. "He spent hours thinking he was going to die and he did what he had to do not to end up shot or dead."

The worst part of this? A police officer actually witnessed the two men with London while he was changing his tire and he didn't realize anything bad was going down.

"By chance, an officer saw the man and two subjects and thought, 'That's nice of them, to stop and help someone change their tire,'" said Sgt. Douglas. "That helped one of our officers to be able to identify the suspects later on."

We think London might have appreciated it more if the police officer had, you know, detected the crime to begin with, but maybe that's just us.

Even without this kidnapping incident, poor London has been going through a bit of a rough patch. In September 2009, the 7th Heaven star went to rehab to battle an addiction to prescription pills (which makes his forced drug intake during the kidnapping all the more disturbing), and he's currently going through a divorce from actress Melissa Cunningham, whom he married in 2006.

On the bright side, two men have already been charged after London's car was found outside the home of one of the alleged kidnappers.

-- Canwest News Service

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 18, 2010 D2

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