Hayden Panettiere, the actress known for her roles in Heroes and Nashville, died from the toxic effects of fentanyl and a combination of other substances, the Greenville County Coroner’s Office in South Carolina confirmed Tuesday. Her death has been ruled an accident. She was 36.
Panettiere was pronounced dead on August 16th at an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina. Medics responding to a 911 call found her in cardiac arrest and were unable to resuscitate her. The coroner listed the cause of death as the toxic effects of fentanyl, 4-ANPP (a fentanyl precursor), alprazolam, methocarbamol, and quetiapine.
Despite ruling the death accidental, authorities have not closed their investigation. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and Los Angeles-area authorities have questioned several people about the circumstances surrounding her death. Investigators were examining whether Panettiere may have taken a counterfeit narcotic and whether it may have interacted with other substances in her system. “The investigation remains ongoing and the circumstances surrounding the case are complex,” said Panettiere’s representative, Kasey Kitchen.
The Circumstances of Her Death
Brian Hickerson — Panettiere’s boyfriend — and his brother Zach called 911 on the afternoon of August 16th to report that she was unresponsive. The brothers were questioned separately at the scene. Brian Hickerson gave an officer a bag containing Panettiere’s medications, according to a Greenville police incident report.
Panettiere “had been temporarily staying” at the Greenville apartment, according to the coroner’s office. The apartment’s owner was not identified. The Hickerson family has ties to the Greenville area, while Brian Hickerson had been living in California and Zach in Georgia.
Her Life and Struggles
Panettiere began her career before she was even a year old and spent decades in the public eye. She was best known for playing cheerleader Claire Bennet in the NBC series Heroes from 2006 to 2010 and Juliette Barnes in Nashville from 2012 to 2018. She had spoken publicly and candidly about postpartum depression and addiction, both of which significantly affected her adult life and disrupted her career at various points. This year, she addressed those struggles in a memoir and had begun speaking publicly about the 2023 death of her brother Jansen Panettiere, also from an accidental overdose.
Her career had been showing signs of renewed momentum — a film was released in January — when her death shocked Hollywood and extended beyond it. Former Olympic boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko, Panettiere’s former partner and the father of their daughter Kaya, paid tribute publicly and vowed to ensure Kaya would always know her mother.
Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids remain the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States, involved in more than half of all overdose fatalities. Despite significant reductions in overdose deaths in recent years, provisional CDC data indicate synthetic opioids were involved in more than 35,000 US deaths in the past year alone.
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