Brian Hickerson seen for first time since Hayden Panettiere's death

Hayden Panettiere's on-off boyfriend has broken his cover after the actor's death from a suspected overdose.

Brian Hickerson, who was at the scene when she was pronounced dead this week, was arrested for domestic violence multiple times throughout their relationship.

He was photographed outside his grandmother's house in South Carolina on Tuesday, two days after Panettiere was found unresponsive in an armchair at a nearby apartment.

In the summer of 2020, Hickerson, himself an aspiring actor, faced a host of charges stemming from alleged domestic violence incidents with Panettiere.

In an apparent attempt to influence his girlfriend into dropping the charges, Hickerson warned Panettiere that he had a trove of damaging information ready to use against her, police said at the time.

The real estate agent ended up pleading no contest to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend and served 33 days in jail.

Despite this, the on-off couple were photographed together as recently as March 2026, and a heavily redacted police report from the scene of her death this week referred to Panettiere as Hickerson's "girlfriend", the Daily Mail reports.

On Monday, TMZ reported that Panettiere had kept their reconciliation a secret for the sake of her book sales. She published her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, on 19 May.

Earlier this week, her estranged mother, Lesley Vogel, told NBC News that she "always knew they were together".