Hayden Panettiere, ‘Heroes’ actress, dead at 36
(CNN) — By all accounts, Hayden Panettiere’s new life was just getting started.
The actress who shot to fame playing an indestructible cheerleader in the NBC show “Heroes” was far more vulnerable in real life. Mental health challenges, postpartum depression and addiction plagued her young adult years and temporarily halted the career that began when she was less than a year old.
But this year, Panettiere addressed her struggles in a memoir and spoke publicly about losing her brother. And her career was making a comeback, with her latest film released in January.
So when the 36-year-old was pronounced dead in a South Carolina apartment where police reported she was with a man identified as her boyfriend and his brother on Sunday, shock and grief stretched around the world.
“I just feel that she’s with her brother and they’re at peace,” Lesley Vogel, Panettiere’s mom, told NBC News through tears on Tuesday.
Panettiere said there was no relationship between her and her mother earlier this year on Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast.
Here’s what we know (and don’t know) about Panettiere’s death:
She suffered cardiac arrest at a home she was temporarily staying in
Medics responded to a 911 call about a “reported cardiac arrest” around 1:51 p.m. Sunday at a residence in Greenville, the county coroner’s office said.
The report came from the Judson Mill Lofts on Easley Bridge Road, Greenville police said. The coroner’s office said Panettiere, a California resident, “had been temporarily staying” at the apartment complex, but authorities did not say who lived at the residence.
First responders arrived and found Panettiere in cardiac arrest, the coroner’s office said. Dispatch audio obtained from Broadcastify.com references a possible overdose and CPR in progress, though authorities have not addressed whether an overdose actually took place.
Medics tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate Panettiere, who was pronounced dead at the scene at 2:32 p.m., the coroner’s office said.
Panettiere’s reported boyfriend and his brother called 911, police say
A Greenville police officer arrived at the scene and interviewed brothers Brian and Zach Hickerson, who said they called 911, a police report states.
“I spoke with Zach Hickerson first, he advised this was his brother’s girlfriend,” the officer wrote in the report.
Brian Hickerson showed the officer a bag of Panettiere’s medications, the report said. But many details of the police report are redacted, including a list of Panettiere’s medications.
CNN has reached out to Brian and Zach Hickerson for comment.
No obvious signs of trauma were found
An autopsy performed Monday revealed no signs of trauma that would have contributed to her death, the coroner’s office said.
The official cause and manner of death have not been determined, pending the results of additional testing. Toxicology tests, which are standard in many death investigations, can take weeks to complete.
Panettiere detailed domestic abuse in memoir months before death
In a candid memoir published less than three months before her death, Panettiere detailed the evolution of a once-exciting, new relationship that quickly escalated into years of domestic violence by a man she referred to only as “Brian.” The actress wrote about heated, many times drunken, arguments ending with him slapping and hitting her between screams: “One night he busts up my face so badly I don’t leave the house for weeks.”
“You never forget the first time someone slaps you,” she wrote. “Nor do you forget the last.”
According to the Superior Court of Los Angeles County Clerk’s Office, in 2019, a Brian Hickerson was convicted of two felony charges of “Injuring a Spouse, Cohabitant, Fiance’s, Boyfriend, Girlfriend or Child’s Parent,” and sentenced to four years of formal probation.
Panettiere also wrote about at least three different instances where “Brian” was arrested after he’d hit her during a fight, including on Valentine’s Day in 2020 while the couple was on vacation in Wyoming.
In May 2026, Brian Hickerson did an interview with TMZ, saying he had read Panettiere’s then-new book, acknowledging that he “had a lot to drink and I got physical with (Panettiere) and I got arrested,” on February 14, 2020. He called the parts of the book detailing domestic violence “my chapter. Everybody should read it.”
CNN’s Lisa Respers France and Sara Smart contributed to this report.
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