What the Police Report Reveals About Hayden Panettiere's Death
A heavily redacted Greenville Police Department report released on Tuesday, August 18, 2026 confirms that Brian Hickerson — Hayden Panettiere's on-and-off boyfriend — and his brother Zach Hickerson were present at the South Carolina apartment where the actress died over the weekend. The report, obtained by NBC News, offers the first official account of the circumstances surrounding Panettiere's death on Sunday afternoon.
According to the report, a Greenville police officer responding to the apartment was met by Brian and Zach Hickerson. Inside, paramedics were performing CPR on an unresponsive woman. Zach Hickerson identified her as his brother's girlfriend. The responding officer noted that the patient did not appear to have any obvious physical reasons to be unresponsive. Emergency workers declared Panettiere dead at 2:31pm after attempting lifesaving measures. An autopsy — the medical examination of a body to determine cause of death — found no signs of trauma, and police said officers observed no signs of foul play. No cause of death has been determined, and the death remains under investigation.
The police report documented the brothers' demeanors during the emergency response. The responding officer observed Zach Hickerson to be "very emotional" while EMS worked on Panettiere. Brian Hickerson did not become emotional until EMS declared her officially deceased, according to the report. After Panettiere was pronounced dead, the officer escorted the brothers out of the apartment and spoke with Brian Hickerson in greater depth. The details of that conversation were redacted — meaning blacked out or removed from the public version of the document. Brian Hickerson also showed police a bag containing medications Panettiere had been taking, though the list of those medications was redacted in the report (KRQE, WQAD).
Brian Hickerson's presence at the scene carries particular weight given his documented history of domestic violence against Panettiere. During their relationship, which began when the two met at a West Hollywood restaurant in 2018 after Panettiere noticed his "charming smile," Hickerson was arrested numerous times, including on charges of domestic violence in 2019 and 2020. He was charged in 2020 with multiple counts of felony abuse related to allegations of physical abuse against Panettiere. He ultimately pleaded no contest — a legal plea that accepts punishment without formally admitting guilt — to two counts of injuring a spouse or partner, served a short time in jail, and was sentenced to four years of probation, anger management, and Alcoholics Anonymous sessions (People).
Just days before Panettiere's death, a Los Angeles judge denied Hickerson's request to reduce his conviction to misdemeanors. The timing adds a layer of legal significance to the investigation, though police have explicitly stated they found no signs of foul play.
Panettiere, known for her roles in the television series Heroes and Nashville, would have turned 37 on Friday, August 21. She had been open about her struggles with alcohol addiction and postpartum depression following the 2014 birth of her daughter Kaya, whose father is Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko. Panettiere entered rehab in 2015 while filming Nashville. Kaya, now 11, began living with Klitschko full-time in Ukraine when she was two years old. In her memoir This Is Me, published in May, Panettiere wrote about Hickerson's time behind bars and reflected on the relationship that followed her highly publicized personal difficulties (The Guardian).
The redactions in the police report are extensive enough to leave significant questions unanswered. The conversation between Brian Hickerson and the responding officer after Panettiere's death, the full list of medications, and other details remain sealed. The absence of trauma on autopsy and the officer's observation that Panettiere had "no obvious physical reasons to be unresponsive" narrow the range of possible causes but do not eliminate any specific explanation pending toxicology — the analysis of drugs and other substances in the body — or further forensic analysis.
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 misdemeanor reduction request, and his presence at the apartment when she died will inevitably frame public interpretation of the investigation's outcome. That the police found no signs of foul play is an important factual anchor, but it is a preliminary assessment, not a conclusion. The cause of death remains undetermined, and the investigation is active. The gap between what the redacted report reveals and what it withholds means that any definitive judgment about what happened in that Greenville apartment on Sunday afternoon remains premature.
