Drug Enforcement Administration agents are assisting the investigation into Hayden Panettiere’s death, according to sources cited by TMZ, ABC News and The New York Times. The agency itself told TMZ it “does not confirm or comment on active investigations,” and no official has confirmed the involvement on the record. It pulls a federal agency into a case that police in South Carolina are still calling active and unresolved.
The agents are assisting two separate investigations already running in Greenville, one by the city police department, which is leading the case, and one by the county coroner’s office. The reports followed the discovery of Narcan, the medication used to reverse opioid overdoses, inside the apartment where the 36-year-old actress died on August 16. Nobody has said publicly why federal agents are involved.
Toxicology results are not back yet. No one has been charged, and no one has been publicly accused of a crime. Federal drug agents do not usually attach themselves to a single death, though, and the reports have changed the way everyone is reading this one.
Her mother says police are treating it like a crime
Panettiere’s mother, Lesley Vogel, told NBC News that law enforcement is looking into whether her daughter’s death was a crime, and that a narcotics investigator had been brought into the case. Vogel said she was not sure exactly where the investigation stood.
Vogel has not been quiet since her daughter died. She pointed directly at Panettiere’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, who was inside the apartment when the actress was pronounced dead. “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 said.
She also said she believed Hollywood had corrupted her daughter and pushed her toward the path that ended her life. Vogel has openly questioned one thing that does not sit right with her: why a suspected overdose would happen on a Sunday afternoon.
Police showed up at Brian Hickerson’s family home
Officers went to the home of Hickerson’s grandmother in South Carolina at about 8:20 a.m. on Wednesday, August 19. Greenville police said afterwards that the visit was a welfare check and was “unrelated to the Hayden Panettiere death investigation.” Officers knocked, got no answer, and left after about three minutes.
TMZ, citing an unnamed law enforcement source, reported that investigators are looking into whether Hickerson had any involvement. No newsroom has independently confirmed that, and no official has named him a suspect or a person of interest. The Greenville police incident report lists Hickerson and his brother as witnesses.
Hickerson has not been accused of any wrongdoing. He was photographed for the first time since her death that same Wednesday, stepping outside in sunglasses and a baseball cap.
The history between the two is part of why so many people are watching this. Hickerson pleaded no contest to domestic violence charges involving Panettiere in 2021. Friends and family had worried for a long time that she was still with him. A source close to Panettiere told Us Weekly that the relationship “had led her down a dark path in the past.”
What happened that Sunday
Panettiere and Hickerson had flown from Los Angeles to South Carolina on Saturday, the day before she died. The trip put both of them in the Greenville apartment where things went wrong the next day.
TMZ reported, citing its own sources, that Hickerson was asleep in a bedroom that Sunday afternoon and that his brother, Zach, walked in and found Panettiere unresponsive in a living room chair. The police report says only that both men were present and that both called 911. A 911 call went out at 1:51 PM reporting an unresponsive female in cardiac arrest.
First responders started advanced cardiac life support. It did not work. The Greenville County Coroner’s Office said she was pronounced dead at 2:32 PM. The coroner noted she had been “temporarily staying” at the residence.
An autopsy was done the next day, Monday, August 17. The coroner’s office said “no signs of trauma were discovered that would have contributed to the death.” Her official cause and manner of death are still pending toxicology and additional studies. Her body was released to the family on Tuesday evening and sent to a mortuary.
The bag of medication
When officers arrived, Hickerson showed them a bag of medication Panettiere was taking, according to the redacted police report. The specific drug names were blacked out.
That bag matters because of what investigators are trying to figure out. They are examining the source of any controlled substances found at the scene, which is exactly the work the DEA does. Radio traffic captured on a public safety scanner referenced a possible “overdose” as responders worked. Authorities have not said whether an overdose took place.
Panettiere told Women’s Health in May that she had spent the past year dealing with an injury, “some nerve damage in my lower back,” with “pins and needles from my waist down.” She had also been open for years about her struggles with opioid and alcohol addiction, and had once spent an eight-month stretch in rehab.
Why this looks like the Matthew Perry case
The DEA’s involvement drew immediate comparisons to Matthew Perry. The “Friends” actor died in 2023 from a ketamine overdose, and the DEA’s work on that case turned into an investigation and prosecution that ran about two and a half years.
Five people pleaded guilty and all five have now been sentenced, the last of them in May. Two were doctors. Another was a dealer known around Los Angeles as the “Ketamine Queen.” The agency did not go after the person who died. It went after the people who supplied and profited from the drugs.
No one has said that is where the Panettiere investigation is headed. The pattern is the same, though. When the DEA attaches itself to a celebrity death after drugs are found, it is usually chasing a supply chain, not filling out paperwork on a cause of death.
What the Narcan actually means
Narcan being in the apartment is the detail everyone latched onto, and it is worth being clear about what it does and does not prove.
The medication reverses opioid overdoses, and it is now kept in millions of homes, especially by people in recovery and their families, because it can save a life in minutes. Its presence fits an overdose picture. It is not proof of one.
No official has characterized what the Narcan means. The real answer is coming from toxicology, and the coroner’s office has estimated that work could take around eight weeks.
Who Hayden Panettiere was
Panettiere broke through as a kid actor, then became a household name playing cheerleader Claire Bennet on “Heroes” and country star Juliette Barnes on “Nashville.” She was also in the “Scream” franchise and voiced characters going back to her childhood. Tim Fywell, who directed her in “Ice Princess,” grouped her with Michelle Trachtenberg, his other young lead, calling them “Two shining talents, gone far too soon.” Trachtenberg died in February 2025; the New York medical examiner ruled her death natural, from complications of diabetes.
She had grown more open about her private life in recent years. Her memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” dealt with childhood fame, motherhood, and the loss of her younger brother Jansen, who died in 2023 at 28. “I will never be able to get over it,” she said of losing him. She was last photographed publicly at LaGuardia Airport on May 20, the day after the book came out.
She shared a daughter, Kaya, with former fiance Wladimir Klitschko. In her book she wrote about losing custody as “the most gut-wrenching experience of my life.”
Her father, Skip Panettiere, asked for privacy. “It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden,” he said. She would have turned 37 on Friday, August 21.
For now, the case sits in a strange spot. Greenville police said on August 17 that the preliminary investigation had “not indicated any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances.” The coroner said the cause is pending. The DEA is assisting. And a grieving mother keeps telling anyone who will listen that she does not buy the simple version of what happened to her daughter.
The toxicology report will decide much of it. Until then the record holds this much: a 36-year-old actress found unresponsive in an apartment she was temporarily staying in, a bag of medication shown to police, a preliminary finding of no foul play, and a cause of death still pending.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance use, the SAMHSA National Helpline is 1-800-662-4357. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.
