Chelsea O’Donnell, the estranged adopted daughter of actress Rosie O’Donnell, has been arrested twice in one month, becoming the main suspect in a drug addiction and child endangerment case described in harrowing detail by Wisconsin law enforcement.
O’Donnell, 27, had encounters with police on September 10 and October 11 of this year, according to court documents first reported on by In Touch. In those documents, officers paint a bleak picture of a young woman with a severe drug addiction — living in “horrible” squalor, to the point of keeping used hypodermic needles near her 11-month-old son’s crib.
On September 10, O’Donnell called 911 during an argument with her boyfriend Jacob Nelund — the father of one of her four children — prompting officers from the Marinette County Sheriff’s Department to check out the situation.
“The inside of the home was disgusting,” one officer reportedly wrote. “[T]hroughout the house I saw rotten food, dirty moldy dishes, milk that stunk so bad it almost made me puke, dirty diapers, used female hygiene products, unclean underwear with feces and blood stains and used razor blades on the floor.”
The officers say they found a used meth pipe in the couple’s room, a vial of meth and a bag of pills hidden in O’Donnell’s bra, plus a marijuana pipe and “a possible one pot meth cooking setup” elsewhere in the house, according to In Touch.
However, the most stomach-turning details come from the officers’ search of the infant’s room. In Touch relays the contents of the court documents:
One officer went into the child’s room and found a blue box on the nightstand. In the box he found several hypodermic needles.
“Some of the needles were used and had dried blood in them. I know that drug users commonly use needs like this to shoot meth into their arms or ‘bang out.’”
The report added, “Under a baby crib, I located a black and silver digital scale, some used gem bags with white residue, and a sharps container that had more used and unused hypodermic needles. In a clothes pile, I found a straw that had been cut off and burnt.”
Another officer described the scene writing, “Inside the bedroom that appeared to be designated as [the child’s] room, there were numerous used hypodermic needles. Several of them were loaded with blood. There were old apples, garbage, random tools, and butane bottles sitting on the floor, all mixed with the clothing belonging to [the child].” During the home search, officers also found a meth bong, meth pipe “that a small child could have easily grabbed.” [emphasis added]
In a damning summary, one officer wrote: “It appeared Jacob and Chelsea were more concerned with their drug addiction than providing [the baby] with a safe and clean environment.”
The court documents reportedly say Atlas, the boy born in October 2023, was sleeping somewhere inside the home at the time of the search. O’Donnell was arrested, and Child Protective Services allowed the boy to stay with one of Nelund’s friends.
A week later, the young mother was “charged with four felony counts of maintaining a drug trafficking place, child neglect, possession of methamphetamine, and possession of THC,” according to In Touch.
In documents for the October incident, officers say they pulled over O’Donnell, finding more drugs and paraphernalia in her car and on her person (again in her bra), including crystal meth and various opioid pills. They allege she tried to throw a meth pipe toward a river, but it hit a fence and bounced back to where they could recover it. ,
According to In Touch, “Chelsea was arrested and charged with three felonies of possession of meth, bail jumping,” as she had been released on bond after her September arrest, “possession of narcotics and other misdemeanor charges.”
Rosie O’Donnell, a comedian turned film actor and talk show host, adopted Chelsea with her then-partner Kelli Carpenter as a baby. However, their relationship soured as Chelsea grew older, and as a teenager, she moved from New York to Wisconsin to be closer to her biological mother, according to In Touch.
Chelsea O’Donnell and Rosie O’Donnell on October 1, 2009 in New York City. (Jimi Celeste/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
In 2015, the pair had a brief war of words via the press after an incident where Chelsea went missing and was found with an alleged drug dealer she met on Tinder. A source aligned with Rosie told the New York Post‘s Page Six: “Chelsea is mentally ill, it is a parent’s worst nightmare.”
The teenager fired back in an interview with the Daily Mail, calling O’Donnell a “phony” and neglectful parent after losing her job as a co-host on The View. “She was a completely different person in public than at home,” she told the paper, alleging that the Flintstones actress frequently over-indulged in food, television, alcohol, and marijuana — and revealing she felt closer to the nannies who raised her than her adoptive mother.
In the past few years, O’Donnell has had scant work in television, including a guest appearance on Amazon’s swiftly-canceled A League of Their Own series. In contrast, she has kept quite busy hosting a podcast and posting on social media, engaging in myriad shenanigans:
• Defending transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney as his promotional deal with Anheuser-Busch tanked its image, cost over a billion dollars in lost revenue, and dethroned Bud Light as the top beer brand in the United States
• Affectionately texted encouragement such as “u got this” and “i love u” to Michael Cohen, the former lawyer to Donald Trump, as he testified in the New York criminal case against the former president
• Lauded her “non-binary” ten-year-old daughter, who uses “they/them” pronouns, and declared that “gender is infinite”
• Announced she was “depressed” at a Supreme Court decision that former President Trump had immunity from prosecution while executing many of his duties in the White House
• Fretted that “democracy in the United States” will end if Trump is re-elected
• Enthusiastically embraced Vice President Kamala Harris’s sudden entry into the presidential election, saying she bought “a hundred Kamala t-shirts” and would wear them every day until her inauguration
• Spread a conspiracy theory about the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump, stating, “I don’t think it was a bullet that hit him”
