Hayden Panettiere’s on-and-off boyfriend was there when she died: police

Hayden Panettiere’s on-and-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson and his brother Zach Hickerson were at the South Carolina residence where the actor died on Sunday, a police report released Tuesday says.

A Greenville police officer who responded to a 911 call at the apartment says he spoke with both men and saw emergency responders performing CPR on an unresponsive woman, according to the heavily redacted document.

“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 of death has been determined and it remains under investigation. An autopsy revealed no signs of trauma and police said responding officers saw no signs of foul play.

Panettiere, who started acting as a child and shot to fame in the TV shows Heroes and Nashville, endured struggles with alcohol addiction and depression. She would have turned 37 on Friday.

She and Hickerson were in a tumultuous relationship for years, with Hickerson facing allegations of physical abuse towards the late actor.

He was charged in 2020 with multiple counts of felony abuse, and pleaded no contest to two counts of injuring a spouse or partner and served a short time in jail as a result. He was sentenced to four years of probation and anger management and ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

In her memoir, published in May, Panettiere wrote that she hoped Hickerson’s brief jail stint would change him for the better and that she wanted to forgive him.

“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.”

The two met at a West Hollywood restaurant in 2018, in an encounter described in Panettiere’s memoir as “charming.”

The police report says the responding officer spoke to Zack Hickerson first 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 Panettiere was declared dead the officer escorted the brothers out of the apartment from the hallway where they were sitting and spoke with Brian in more depth.

The details of the conversation have been redacted, as well as several others including a list of medications Panettiere had been taking.

Hickerson has not spoken publicly or issued a statement since her death. Panettiere’s ex-partner and the father of their 11-year-old daughter, Kaya, Wladimir Klitschko wrote in an Instagram statement Tuesday that their family was “going through a time of profound shock and grief.”

— with files from the Associated Press