Hayden Panettiere died from unintended overdose involving fentanyl, coroner says

Actor Hayden Panettiere died from an unintended overdose of a number of medicine, together with fentanyl, a coroner in South Carolina mentioned Tuesday (Sep 22).

Panettiere, 36, was discovered unresponsive in an house in Greenville, South Carolina, on Aug 16. Her on-and-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson and his brother Zach Hickerson had been on the dwelling.

According to a press release from the Greenville County Coroner’s Office, a mix of fentanyl and its chemical byproduct, in addition to the anti-anxiety treatment alprazolam, a muscle relaxer and a drug used to deal with main melancholy and different severe psychological well being issues, was present in Panettiere’s system.

The workplace didn’t embody additional particulars from the post-mortem report in its preliminary launch.

Asked for touch upon the coroner’s report, Kasey Kitchen, a publicist for the household, instructed The Associated Press that “the investigation is still ongoing and the case is complex”.

Greenville Police confirmed Tuesday that their investigation into Panettiere’s death is continuing.

Paramedics responded to Panettiere’s apartment last month after a 911 call and performed CPR and other advanced resuscitation efforts for more than 40 minutes before she was declared dead. An autopsy found no signs of trauma that could have contributed to her death, Greenville County Coroner Mike Ellis said in a statement.

The police report released after her death listed medications Panettiere was taking, but the drug names were redacted.

PANETTIERE’S EARLY FAME BROUGHT SUCCESS AND STRUGGLE

Panettiere soared to fame in the TV shows Heroes and Nashville. In her memoir This Is Me, released in May, Panettiere described lifelong scars from her early fame and acknowledged being addicted to alcohol and enduring postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, Kaya, with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko in 2014.

She also endured family struggles and tragedy. Her parents’ marriage was strained and eventually ended. Her younger brother, Jansen Panettiere, who was also an actor, died of a heart condition in 2023, at age 28.

Panettiere also talked about her long relationship with Brian Hickerson and allegations that the aspiring actor physically abused her.

He was charged in 2020 with multiple counts of felony abuse, and he pleaded no contest to two counts of injuring a spouse or partner and served a short time in jail due to the case. He was sentenced to four years of probation and anger management and Alcoholics Anonymous sessions.

Hickerson completed the terms and recently asked a judge to reduce his conviction to misdemeanours; that request was denied.

Panettiere was one of two children born to Skip Panettiere, a former New York City fire captain, and Lesley Vogel, a former soap opera star. She acted in commercials and soap operas, including as the ever-troubled Lizzie Spaulding on Guiding Light. In This Is Me, she wrote that the traumas her character endured, from being kidnapped to killing her mother’s boyfriend, led her to associate “catastrophe with adoration”.

She then performed a cheerleader with supernatural powers in Heroes, which propelled her to fame in 2006.

By 2015, Panettiere was taking part in a brash nation upstart reverse Connie Britton on Nashville, which aired on ABC for 4 seasons earlier than being cancelled and revived on CMT. She did her personal singing within the present, which scored some hits on nation charts, spawned US excursions and earned Panettiere two supporting actress Golden Globe nominations.

But she additionally mentioned she was in a horrible cycle of utilizing alcohol and medicines to battle melancholy and anxiousness and needed to discover a manner out of the darkness. She entered rehab whereas filming the present.

“I was the one who put myself in the first treatment centre. I was drowning,” she mentioned in a 2023 interview with Women’s Health journal.