Greenville police close Hayden Panettiere death probe, ruling it accidental

Police close the case

Greenville police announced on Wednesday, 28 October, that they had closed their investigation into the death of Hayden Panettiere, who was found unresponsive in an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina, on 16 August at the age of 36. The department said the death had been classified as accidental, based on the medical examiner's findings and its own inquiry. The statement read:

“Based on the Medical Examiner's determination and the findings of the investigation, Hayden Panettiere's death has been ruled accidental.”

Officers were called at around 1:50 p.m. ET and found her in cardiac arrest, the coroner's report said, and she was pronounced dead at the scene at 2:32 p.m. Her on-and-off boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, and his brother Zach were in the apartment at the time, according to a police report. The closure ends the local probe, but federal involvement remains unresolved.

What the coroner found

The Greenville County Coroner's Office reported in September that Panettiere died from the toxic effects of fentanyl, 4-ANPP, alprazolam, methocarbamol and quetiapine. Alprazolam is the drug sold as Xanax, and methocarbamol is a prescription muscle relaxant. Reports describe quetiapine as an antipsychotic used to treat certain mental health conditions. The autopsy found no signs of trauma that contributed to the death. The coroner classed the death an accidental overdose, and the police decision rests on that finding.

Federal inquiry and her estate

Media reports said the Drug Enforcement Administration had joined the local investigation in August, but the agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment after the closure. A Greenville police sergeant said she could not say whether any other agency was still looking into the death. In a petition to a California court in September, Wladimir Klitschko, her former fiance, said federal law enforcement agents and an unnamed nonrelative had taken some of her property, and that the nonrelative was looking to sell it. In October the court granted him legal status to protect the property for their 11-year-old daughter, who is her sole heir. Her father told investigators that she had planned to visit the girl in Ukraine within days of her death.

Her memoir and public struggles

Panettiere, who began acting as a child and was known for Heroes, Nashville and Scream 4 and 6, published a memoir called This Is Me: A Reckoning in May. In it she acknowledged addiction to alcohol and postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter in 2014. The girl went to live with Klitschko full-time when she was 2. In interviews she also spoke about a difficult childhood as a young star, a distant relationship with her mother and grief over her younger brother, who died of a heart condition in 2023. The sequence of dates, from the memoir in May to the closure on 28 October, is set out in the chart below.