The circumstances around Hayden Panettiere’s death at aged 36 are still unclear but new reports say she was found by her boyfriend’s brother.
It’s believed that her on-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson was at the apartment where Panettiere took her last breaths.
A source has now claimed that he was asleep in the bedroom at the time, while his brother, Zach, was the one to discover the actress.
TMZ’s insiders claimed that Zach had entered the Airbnb and ‘found Hayden in a chair in the living room’. The brothers are said to have then called 911.
The emergency services were dispatched around 1.50pm and attempted to save Panettiere but she could not be revived.
Zach was ‘very emotional’ while the medical staff were ‘working on Hayden’, but his brother reportedly remained stoic until after she was declared dead.
Best known for her roles in Heroes and Nashville, a representative confirmed the actress’ death on Monday, saying her family would remember her as an ‘incredible light’.
First responders had been called out to attend a woman suffering from ‘cardiac arrest’ with reports that the star had suffered an ‘overdose’.
The update comes hours after her estranged mum Lesley Vogel spoke out for the first time since her daughter’s death, revealing the family had been trying to ‘get rid’ of 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,’ Vogel told NBC News.
Her mum continued: ‘I think Hayden was an amazingly talented person in so many departments and I think young people who grow up in the entertainment industry — it is a struggle and it’s a very challenging industry and it’s not unusual for them to sadly find the wrong path.’
Panettiere had been acting from an incredibly early age, booking her first commercials at just 11 months old, before moving to TV and film at four.
Vogel claimed that Hickerson had ‘enabled’ Panettiere in the past so the family had been concerned about their relationship for a long time.
She claimed she had known they were still together, despite the pair publicly distancing themselves, something that was echoed by a TMZ source.
A source claimed the couple were still together privately even when publicly Panettiere had distanced herself from him, on the advice of her team.
