GREENVILLE, S.C. — Hayden Panettiere's on-and-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson and his brother Zach Hickerson were at the South Carolina apartment where the actor died over the weekend, according to a police report released Tuesday.
A Greenville police officer who responded to the residence Sunday afternoon was met by the brothers and then observed paramedics performing CPR on an unresponsive woman, the report states.
“The patient did not seem to have any obvious physical reasons to be unresponsive,” the officer notes. After attempting lifesaving measures, the emergency workers declared Panettiere dead at 2:31 p.m.
No cause has been determined, and her death remains under investigation. An autopsy found no signs of trauma, and police said officers saw no signs of foul play.
The onetime child star, who soared to fame in the TV shows "Heroes" and "Nashville" while enduring struggles with alcohol addiction and depression, would have turned 37 on Friday.
Tumultuous relationship
Panettiere and Brian Hickerson had been in a tumultuous relationship for years, with allegations the 37-year-old aspiring actor physically abused her.
He was charged in 2020 with multiple counts of felony abuse, and he pleaded no contest to two counts of injuring a spouse or partner and served a short time in jail due to the case. He was sentenced to four years of probation and anger management and Alcoholics Anonymous sessions.
He completed the terms and recently asked a judge to reduce his conviction to misdemeanors; that request was denied Thursday by a Los Angeles judge. Messages were sent Tuesday seeking comment from Pat Carey, an attorney for Hickerson.
Panettiere wrote of Hickerson's time behind bars, and how she hoped it would change him, in her memoir, “This Is Me,” which came out in May.
“I wanted Brian to be in jail just long enough to scare him, but not long enough where’d he become a worse person,” she wrote. “I needed him to admit his wrongs and change because of them, but I didn’t want to traumatize him in an irreversible way.”
She wrote about her decision to “let go of my resentment” and try to forgive Hickerson, who she'd met at a West Hollywood restaurant in 2018 after noticing his “charming smile.”
Police report has redactions
The police report, which is heavily redacted, said the responding officer first spoke with Zach Hickerson, who said the unresponsive woman was his brother's girlfriend.
“I observed Zach to be very emotional while EMS were working on Hayden. Brian did not become emotional until EMS declared her officially deceased,” the officer said.
After she was declared dead, the officer escorted the brothers out of the apartment. The officer spoke with Brian “more in depth,” but the details of that conversation are redacted in the police report.
Also redacted is a list that of medications that Panettiere had been taking.
She had been open about addiction issues
In her book, Panettiere described lifelong scars from her early fame, and acknowledged being addicted to alcohol and enduring postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, Kaya, with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko in 2014.
Panettiere's daughter, now 11, began living with Klitschko full-time in Ukraine when she was 2. At the time, the actor was struggling with mental health and addiction. She entered rehab in 2015, while filming "Nashville."
“I think there’s been this very common misconception that I just gave up my child,” she said in an interview with podcaster Jay Shetty in May. “That could not be farther from the truth.”
In a statement Tuesday, Klitschko said he will make sure their daughter always remembers her mother.
“She built an incredible career through immense talent, while also facing the darker sides of a very demanding industry. Nothing will erase the times we shared or the place she had in our lives," Klitschko said on Instagram.
Panettiere had endured numerous family struggles, and tragedy. Her parents’ marriage was strained, and eventually ended. Her younger brother, Jansen Panettiere, who was also an actor, died of a heart condition in 2023, at age 28.
Started out as a child actor
Panettiere was one of two children born to Skip Panettiere, a former New York City fire captain, and Lesley Vogel, a former soap opera star who had been the prime force behind her early career before the two became estranged. Panettiere began acting in commercials and soap operas, including as the ever-troubled Lizzie Spaulding on “Guiding Light.” In “This Is Me,” she wrote that the traumas her character endured, from being kidnapped to killing her mother’s boyfriend, led her to associate “catastrophe with adoration.”
“Is it any wonder why I’ve faced so many real struggles in my life?” she wrote.
She had much warmer memories of her role as a cheerleader with supernatural powers in “Heroes,” which propelled her to fame in 2006. The series revolved around the mantra: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”
She went on to win three Teen Choice Awards for that role. She was also nominated for a Grammy for a children’s spoken word album, “A Bug’s Life: Read-Along.”
Panettiere later played a brash country upstart opposite Connie Britton on “Nashville,” which aired on ABC for four seasons before being canceled and revived on CMT. She did her own singing in the show, which scored some hits on country charts, spawned U.S. tours and earned Panettiere two supporting actress Golden Globe nominations.
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