{"id":573677,"date":"2026-08-19T10:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/573677\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T10:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:40:08","slug":"hayden-panettiere-death-boyfriends-brother-found-actor-unresponsive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/573677\/","title":{"rendered":"Hayden Panettiere death: Boyfriend\u2019s brother found actor unresponsive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Panettiere\u2019s cause of death has not been revealed, but an autopsy<\/a> confirmed trauma had not contributed. An investigation into the circumstances of the 36-year-old\u2019s death is ongoing.<\/p>\n

Hickerson served a jail sentence in 2020 after multiple domestic violence charges relating to his relationship with Panettiere.<\/p>\n

His request to reduce the felonies to a misdemeanour was rejected last Thursday, Page Six reported.<\/p>\n

\"HaydenHayden Panettiere’s estranged mother has claimed boyfriend Brian Hickerson enabled her daughter. Photo \/ gotpap, Bauer-Griffin, GC Images<\/p>\n

In her memoir This Is Me, released earlier this year, Panettiere wrote that she had wanted the 37-year-old to face enough jail time \u201cto scare him\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted Brian to be in jail just long enough to scare him, but not long enough where he\u2019d become a worse person,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI needed him to admit his wrongs and change because of them, but I didn\u2019t want to traumatise him in an irreversible way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panettiere was open about her struggles with postpartum depression and addiction in the book, as well as the pair\u2019s troubled relationship.<\/p>\n

Her mother Lesley Vogel spoke out<\/a> against Hickerson after Panettiere\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Vogel, who was estranged from Panettiere, told NBC News her daughter\u2019s boyfriend had not been a positive influence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis person in her life that we have been trying to get rid of for quite some time was with her at her death, and that was Brian Hickerson.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of history in the past that Brian has enabled Hayden many times, and this is why her father and I had been concerned for a long time about him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panettiere\u2019s relationship with Vogel herself became strained when she was 18.<\/p>\n

After being managed by her mother throughout her childhood in the spotlight, Panettiere told a podcast in May that she had become \u201ceverything but her child\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Panettiere\u2019s cause of death has not been revealed, but an autopsy confirmed trauma had not contributed. An investigation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3376,81952,31468,23552,634,1874,63787,42,43,224853,50359,40,38,41,39,132851],"class_list":["post-573677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-actor","tag-boyfriends","tag-brother","tag-claimed","tag-death","tag-found","tag-hayden","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-panettiere","tag-source","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-unresponsive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}