Days before Hayden Panettiere was found dead at an apartment complex in South Carolina, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, suffered a legal setback after a judge denied his request to reduce his felony domestic violence convictions to misdemeanors.
According to Page Six, Hickerson had asked the court to downgrade the felony charges connected to abusive incidents involving Panettiere. In April 2021, he pleaded no contest to two counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend stemming from a series of incidents between May 2019 and January 2020. His request to have the charges reduced or expunged was denied during a hearing on Aug. 13, just days before Panettiere was found dead at age 36 on Aug. 16.
Hickerson had made a similar attempt last year to have the felony convictions dismissed or reduced, but those motions were denied as well. After his 2021 guilty plea, he was sentenced to 45 days in county jail, four years of probation, and 52 domestic violence classes, while also receiving a five-year restraining order. The pair began dating in 2018, but their relationship repeatedly drew attention over allegations of domestic abuse.
In 2020, for instance, Hickerson was accused of punching Panettiere in the face in Jackson, Wyoming. Panettiere later detailed some of the alleged violent incidents in her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, which was released earlier this year.
TMZ reported that Panettiere died from an apparent overdose at an apartment where she was staying in Greenville, South Carolina. Narcan, a medication used to help treat overdoses, was reportedly discovered at the scene. It remains unclear whether Panettiere used the Narcan herself or if the unidentified person who found her administered it. Emergency responders attempted to revive her using CPR and other life-saving measures, but their efforts were unsuccessful, and she was later pronounced dead.
