Hayden Panettiere‘s mother, Lesley Vogel, made her first comments about the death of her daughter on Tuesday, putting scrutiny on Panettiere’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, actor Brian Hickerson. “This 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,” she told NBC News.
Hickerson and his brother, Zach, were reportedly inside the Greenville, South Carolina, apartment complex where Panettiere went into cardiac arrest. A police report, referenced by NBC News, described Zach as “very emotional,” but that Brian remained composed until EMS pronounced the actress dead. During the encounter, Brian reportedly produced a “bag of medication” police say he said Panettiere had been taking.
Panettiere’s cause of death remains under investigation, according to the Greenville County Coroner’s Office. In the interview, Vogel said she didn’t know much about the police investigation.
“There 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,” Vogel told NBC News.
Panettiere first started dating Hickerson after a 2018 stint in rehab. In her recently released memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, she wrote that Hickerson had beat her to the point that she didn’t feel comfortable leaving the house for weeks. Police arrested him the following year on allegations of domestic abuse against an anonymous person. In 2020, Panettiere asked for a restraining order against Hickerson, and the next year, he pleaded no contest to the abuse charge and was sentenced to four years of probation. In the book, Panettiere also described times when she and Hickerson would be drinking, after her time in rehab, that led to alleged domestic violence.
An autopsy on Monday reported “no signs of trauma … that would have contributed to the death,” according to officials.
Vogel said that despite reports, Hickerson and Panettiere were in a relationship at the time of her death. In May, Vogel told Page Six she had cut off communication with Panettiere. “I think it becomes very difficult to be true to yourself, and I think Hayden sadly lost her way, and I wish it were different,” Vogel told NBC News. “I wish she had stayed true to herself because she had many incredible attributes.”
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