Greenville investigation into Hayden Panettiere’s death focuses on drugs

An investigation into the death of “Nashville” actress Hayden Panettiere has grown to involve law enforcement officers from two states, with the focus shifting to whether drugs were involved. Panettiere was pronounced dead at an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina, last month, just days before she would have turned 37.

A responding officer wrote in an incident report that Panettiere “did not seem to have any obvious physical reasons to be unresponsive.” She had reportedly been in cardiac arrest.

Sources told ABC News and TMZ on Monday that the investigation has become more focused on drugs. Authorities in Los Angeles and South Carolina are now involved, with sources telling both outlets that Panettiere flew from the Southern California city to South Carolina the day before her death.

ABC reported, citing sources, that authorities could be investigating whether Panettiere had been provided drugs before her death. Law enforcement sources reportedly told TMZ that Panettiere may have taken an oxycodone pill laced with fentanyl before her death. Officials have not publicly confirmed this.

The Drug Enforcement Administration joined the investigation shortly after her death, the New York Times reported last month.

The actress’s death remains under investigation, and no toxicology findings or other autopsy details have yet to be released by South Carolina authorities.

Panettiere, a onetime child star who soared to fame in the TV shows “Heroes” and “Nashville,” had been open about her struggles with alcohol addiction and depression. She wrote at length about them in the memoir, “This Is Me,” which came out in May, and described lifelong scars from her early fame.

She also acknowledged being addicted to alcohol and enduring postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, Kaya, with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko in 2014. Panettiere’s daughter, now 11, began living with Klitschko full-time in Ukraine when she was 2.

“I think there’s been this very common misconception that I just gave up my child,” Panettiere said in an interview with podcaster Jay Shetty in May. “That could not be farther from the truth.”

She said she was in a “horrible cycle for years of battling depression and anxiety and alcoholism and substance abuse” while “just trying to find my way back, my way out of the darkness.” She entered rehab in 2015 while filming “Nashville.”

Over the weekend, Panettiere’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, was taken into custody following an alleged fight in a Greenville restaurant, Nexstar’s WSPA reported. His brother, Zachary Hickerson, was also arrested.

Both were present at the time of Panettiere’s death.