Missing Cambridge resort chef located: police
Posted January 10, 2013 2:29 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A renowned Ontario chef whose family reported him missing after not hearing from him for several days was located outside the province Thursday afternoon.
Jonathan Gushue, who heads the kitchen at Langdon Hall, a luxury hotel in Cambridge, Ont., is alive and well, police said, though they’re not saying where.
“We had a job to do: find a missing person,” said Waterloo Regional Police spokesman Olaf Heinzel. “We located him. We’re satisfied he’s OK and in that sense we’re pretty well closing the case on this.”
Gushue was last seen checking out of a hotel in downtown Toronto on New Year’s Eve, though the 41-year-old’s relatives hadn’t heard from him since the day before, police said.
The chef has disappeared for days at a time in the past, but the length of time since his family had last heard from him this time prompted them to call police.
Investigators had said he may have also been going by the name Jonathan Herder, using his middle name as his last name.
Police are now closing the case, saying it’s not their job to see that he returns to Ontario.
“Our concern was to locate him and report back to the family and that’s what we’ve done,” Heinzel said. “It was reported to us from another police agency that he is fine.”
When asked if Gushue himself contacted police to let them know he was safe, Heinzel simply said they had “located him with the assistance of another police service.”
Gushue’s co-workers at Langdon Hall hadn’t yet heard from him Thursday afternoon, but they are counting on his return to the kitchen, spokeswoman Jessica Pearce said.
“He’s never let us down in the past and we wouldn’t foresee it in the future,” she said.
“At this time we do see it as a family matter…We’re just delighted that he has been located and that he has been located safe as well.”
Chef David Sider has been filling in for Gushue, and will continue to do so until Gushue’s return, Pearce said.
Before taking his current job, Gushue worked at several high-profile hotel restaurants, including the now-closed Truffles restaurant at the Four Seasons in Toronto.
A biography on the Langdon Hall website said the award-winning chef was born in St. John’s, N.L., but moved away at age 19.
