Hayden Panettiere's Death: What We Know So Far
A police report from Greenville, South Carolina confirms that Brian Hickerson — Hayden Panettiere's on-and-off boyfriend — and his brother Zach Hickerson were at the apartment where the actress died on Sunday, August 16, 2026. The report was released on Tuesday, August 18, and obtained by NBC News. It is the first official account of what happened.
According to the report, a police officer arrived at the apartment and was met by Brian and Zach Hickerson. Inside, medical workers were trying to save an unresponsive woman. Zach Hickerson said she was his brother's girlfriend. The officer noted that the woman did not appear to have any obvious physical injuries explaining why she was unresponsive. Emergency workers declared Panettiere dead at 2:31pm. An autopsy — a medical exam of the body to find the cause of death — found no signs of trauma. Police said they saw no signs of foul play, meaning no evidence that a crime caused her death. No cause of death has been determined yet, and the investigation is ongoing.
The report also described how the brothers acted during the emergency. Zach Hickerson was "very emotional" while medical workers tried to save Panettiere. Brian Hickerson did not become emotional until she was officially declared dead. After that, the officer took the brothers outside and spoke with Brian Hickerson in more detail. Those details were redacted — meaning they were blacked out and hidden from the public. Brian Hickerson also showed police a bag of medications Panettiere had been taking, but the list of those medications was also redacted (KRQE, WQAD).
Brian Hickerson's presence at the scene matters because he has a documented history of domestic violence against Panettiere. The two met at a restaurant in West Hollywood in 2018. During their relationship, Hickerson was arrested several times, including for domestic violence in 2019 and 2020. In 2020, he was charged with multiple felony counts of abuse against Panettiere. He pleaded no contest — which means he accepted punishment without admitting guilt — to two counts of injuring a partner. He served a short time in jail and was given four years of probation, anger management classes, and Alcoholics Anonymous sessions (People).
Just days before Panettiere's death, a judge in Los Angeles denied Hickerson's request to reduce his conviction from a felony to a misdemeanor — a less serious type of crime. This timing adds legal weight to the investigation, though police have said they found no signs of foul play.
Panettiere was best known for starring in the TV shows Heroes and Nashville. She would have turned 37 on Friday, August 21. She had spoken openly about her struggles with alcohol addiction and postpartum depression — a type of depression some women experience after giving birth. Her daughter Kaya was born in 2014; Kaya's father is Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko. Panettiere entered rehab in 2015 while filming Nashville. Kaya, now 11, went to live with Klitschko in Ukraine when she was two years old. In her memoir This Is Me, published in May, Panettiere wrote about Hickerson's time in jail and reflected on their relationship (The Guardian).
The redacted parts of the report leave many questions unanswered. The conversation between Brian Hickerson and the officer, the full list of medications, and other details remain hidden. The fact that the autopsy found no trauma and the officer saw no obvious reason for Panettiere to be unresponsive narrows the possible causes but does not rule any out. Further testing, such as toxicology — the study of drugs and other substances in the body — may provide more answers.
The broader context here is unavoidably shaped by the history between Hickerson and Panettiere. His documented pattern of domestic violence, the recent denial of his request to reduce his conviction, and his presence at the apartment when she died will inevitably shape how the public views this investigation. The police finding of no foul play is an important fact, but it is a preliminary assessment, not a final conclusion. The cause of death remains unknown, and the investigation is still active. Because the redacted report reveals some things and hides others, any definitive judgment about what happened in that apartment on Sunday afternoon is still premature.
