Hayden Panettiere’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, was at the scene of the South Carolina apartment where the 36-year-old actress died this past Sunday, August 16th, according to a heavily redacted police report obtained by NBC News.
According to the Greenville Police Department, Hickerson and his brother, Zach Hickerson, were at the apartment when the responding officer and emergency medical services arrived.
The responding officer, Matthew Bryan, described Zach Hickerson as “very emotional” in the report while EMS worked to save Panettiere. NBC News notes that the report says Brian Hickerson did not become visibly emotional until Panettiere was declared dead.
Brian Hickerson showed police a “bag of medication” that Panettiere was taking at the time of her death, according to the report. It’s unknown whether he was the person who called 911.
On Monday, the Greenville County Coroner’s Office revealed the result of an autopsy, saying “no signs of trauma were discovered that would have contributed to the death.” Panettiere’s cause of death is pending further investigation.
Panettiere and Hickerson began an on‑and‑off relationship in 2018, during which Hickerson faced multiple allegations of domestic violence. In 2021, he was sentenced to 45 days in county jail over a July 2020 incident.
Their romantic relationship appeared to end there, but both Hickerson and Panettiere had since spoken about working on a friendship. She detailed some of the abuse in her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, published three months before her death.
