By Christopher Harris and Riley Walter
Former television star Andrew O’Keefe has been charged with breaching his bail conditions and possessing drugs, two days after being revived following an overdose at a party in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
O’Keefe was treated by paramedics in the early hours of Saturday morning after overdosing at a home in Vaucluse. Emergency services, responding to a neighbour’s concern-for-welfare report, took the 52-year-old to St Vincent’s Hospital, where he was treated and later discharged.
Andrew O’Keefe arriving at Downing Centre courts earlier this month.Credit: Steven Siewert
When O’Keefe reported to meet previous bail conditions at Rose Bay Police Station on Monday afternoon – just over two days after his overdose – officers arrested him and allegedly found prohibited drugs in his nearby car.
He was taken to Waverley Police Station and charged with breaching his bail and possessing prohibited drugs. He was refused bail to face Waverley Local Court on Tuesday.
Shortly before his arrest, O’Keefe was involved in a confrontation with a freelance camera operator outside Rose Bay Police Station.
“Running two red lights while chasing me is not a good idea,” said O’Keefe in footage of the confrontation aired by Seven News.
As he was filming, the camera operator called O’Keefe a “f---ing degenerate”.
O’Keefe will face court on September 26 on an unrelated charge after he was allegedly caught driving with methylamphetamine in his system at Darlinghurst in April.
The former Weekend Sunrise host last week lost an appeal against his convictions for domestic violence after a judge found he had a tendency to spit at the woman in a “low, demeaning act” and that her injuries were consistent with being kicked, pushed and scratched.
O’Keefe was found guilty by a magistrate in January of common assault, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and breaching an apprehended violence order after a “violent and degrading” incident against the woman inside a unit in Sydney’s east in September 2021.
“Obviously, I’m very disappointed,” O’Keefe said outside Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court last Monday as his appeal against those convictions was dismissed.
Judge John Pickering said O’Keefe’s behaviour at the time of his arrest, captured on police body camera footage released by the court, was “utterly irrelevant” to the consideration of his appeal, as he had been acquitted by the magistrate of resisting arrest. It was “completely separate” from the domestic violence allegations.
The footage showed O’Keefe screaming at police officers arresting him at his CBD apartment in September 2021.
“This is what happens when I don’t have my medication,” he shouts at one of the officers after being told of the charges against him.
“This is a very simple request. Why are you being such f---ing Nazis about it?”
Shortly after, O’Keefe is told to “calm down”, to which he responds: “Why would I calm down when you’re doing this to me?” as four officers restrain him and pin him against a wall.
O’Keefe also appealed against a separate conviction after being found guilty of possessing 1.6 grams of the prohibited drug mephedrone, also known as the party drug “meow meow”, and was fined $500.
The judge found there was reasonable doubt as to whether O’Keefe ever possessed the drug, and the magistrate should have had a reasonable doubt about the charge. He upheld the appeal and quashed that conviction.
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