Hayden Panettiere, the actress known for her turn in Heroes and Nashville, died one month ago. So far, there has been no official explanation, other than an active investigation that has involved the DEA. Now, the man who was beside her when it happened has found himself in a bar fight, ending the night in handcuffs and shouting an accusation at the officers around him. On August 16, 2026, first responders arrived at the star’s South Carolina rental to find the 36-year-old unresponsive. They performed CPR, but she was pronounced dead at 2:31 p.m., with Greenville County Coroner Mike Ellis saying an autopsy turned up no injuries or signs of trauma. Toxicology results are still forthcoming, so it might take a while for a final cause of death to be announced. (via Fox Carolina) Panettiere had come to Greenville from Los Angeles for a quiet weekend, with her boyfriend Brian Hickerson. The actress had been candid about her struggles with alcohol and opioids over the years, and wrote about them in her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning. But back to the boyfriend — because a little less than a month after her death, officers were called to the Wild Wing Cafe on Woodruff Road around 9:10 p.m. on September 12 after a reported assault. They found several people tangled up in a fight and police ended up detaining multiple individuals, one of whom was Hickerson, along with his brother Zach. Brian clashes with the police over Panettiere’s death According to TMZ, the pair had been drinking for hours at a table near the back before Brian wandered up to the bar, picked up a stool and hurled it behind him. Officers arrested Zach for disorderly conduct, but Brian was let go from the scene without charges. It was during this stretch in handcuffs that Brian shouted something along the lines of “GPD (GreenvillenPolice Department) leaked it when my girlfriend died” at the local police. Jail records showed Zach had been released by Sunday afternoon (per Fox Carolina). Nearly a month on, the case has grown well beyond a local coroner’s inquiry. The Drug Enforcement Administration is now leading the probe, and agents in Los Angeles are helping with the investigation too. Sources told TMZ that Panettiere had a longtime Los Angeles dealer who supplied her with black-market prescription pills. The oxycodone pill she took after her flight to South Carolina is suspected to have been cut with fentanyl, and that remains the working theory on the cause of her death. Hickerson had previously been arrested in 2020 over assaults on Panettiere across 2019 and 2020. He was sentenced to 45 days in county jail along with probation after pleading no contest to two counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend in 2021. Officials have found no evidence so far tying anyone to Panettiere’s death, but the investigation is still ongoing.