Hayden Panettiere once relied on abusive boyfriend’s pastor brother for support

In the months after Hayden Panettiere’s “toxic” boyfriend Brian Hickerson was arrested for the first time in May 2019, on allegations he abused her, his older brother Zach Hickerson stepped in to provide moral support — and perhaps something more — for the troubled TV star.

In early September 2019, Zach Hickerson spent time with Panettiere in New York City as the first domestic violence case against his brother was pending in Los Angeles. Zach and the “Nashville” alum specifically “raised eyebrows” when they were photographed together holding hands while strolling around New York’s SoHo neighborhood, E! News reported at the time.

While one source told E! News they looked “like a couple,” another disputed any notion that they were dating, insisting that Zach, a self-described corporate vice president and “founding pastor” of a non-denominational Christian church in Nashville, was just trying to provide “additional support” to Panettiere as she was going through a difficult time with his brother.

Whatever transpired between Zach Hickerson and Panettiere in 2019, he once again tried to help her this past weekend — and in another situation involving his brother. But he was too late.

According to multiple reports, Zach, 38, found the 36-year-old “Heroes” star Sunday afternoon, passed out in a chair and unresponsive in the Greenville, South Carolina, Airbnb where she was “temporarily staying” with his 37-year-old brother, Page Six reported. A former child star who was open about her struggles with drug and alcohol addiction and postpartum depression, Panettiere had suffered an apparent drug overdose while Brian Hickerson was asleep in the next room.

Hayden Panettiere found unresponsive by Zach Hickerson while brother Brian was asleep in another room: report https://t.co/uhAtcuy5ju pic.twitter.com/xdHezBF9Fe

— New York Post (@nypost) August 18, 2026

Both brothers called 911, but paramedics were unable to revive Panettiere, and she was pronounced dead at the scene, according to a Greenville police report. The report also said Zach Hickerson was “very emotional” when officers arrived, as he described her as his brother’s “girlfriend.” Brian, meanwhile, did not become visibly emotional until after Panettiere was declared dead, Page Six reported. Brian — who reportedly has addiction issues of his own — showed officers “a bag of medication” that the “Heroes” star had allegedly been taking.

Both brothers now find themselves the targets of intense media scrutiny because of Brian Hickerson’s troubled on-again, off-again romantic relationship with Panettiere. In addition, Greenville police are conducting an investigation to determine whether there could be criminal conduct behind the star’s sudden death, Page Six reported.

In the immediate aftermath, Brian Hickerson has not been seen in public, while Zach was briefly left to fend off reporters.

On Tuesday, Zach Hickerson was approached by a Daily Mail reporter outside their grandmother’s home in Greenville, about five miles from the loft apartment where Panettiere died.

“No comment, bro, and with no offense to you and what you’re trying to do, this is private property,” Zach Hickerson told the reporter. “Please respect our privacy. I’m not going to answer anything that you ask me. I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind just leaving us alone.”

On Wednesday morning, both the Daily Mail and Page Six reported that Greenville police stopped by the grandmother’s home two times to conduct “a welfare check.” While Page Six reported that Zach Hickerson was home at the time, police got no response when they knocked on the front door. Officers returned about an hour and a half later, and went around to the back of the house to conduct their “welfare check.” They left about 10 minutes later and offered no details about their visit.

The revelation that the Hickerson brothers were with Panettiere in her final hours has prompted a re-examination of her turbulent relationship with Brian Hickerson, as well as scrutiny of Zach, whose LinkedIn page describes him as a vice president for a healthcare staffing company.

But at some point, Zach Hickerson also launched Acts 321, which the website describes as an independent non-denominational church in Nashville. On the website, Zach said he was eager to “save souls” and to “reach individuals in the arts and entertainment industry” during his regular visits to Los Angeles. It’s not clear how active the church is, as it lists no recent or upcoming gatherings for congregants.

Both Panettiere and her family and friends said she had been trying to extricate herself from her relationship with Brian Hickerson for years, with the New York Times reporting that she had even hired private security to help ensure that Brian stayed away. In a podcast interview in May, Panettiere described herself as finally free of him, saying, “Abusers — they weave themselves like weeds into your life.”

Yet, despite those efforts to keep her distance, it appears that Panettiere reconnected with Brian Hickerson again, including around the time that she was promoting her memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” which was released in May. TMZ reported that Panettiere and Hickerson had secretly resumed their romance. They were keeping it quiet because her team believed that Hickerson was “bad for business” and their complicated history would be perceived as being bad for book sales.

That complicated history began in 2018 when they met at a Los Angeles bar. She was newly single and out of a recent stint in rehab after making the “gut-wrenching” decision to give up custody of her then-3-year-old daughter, Kaya, because of her ongoing struggles with addiction and postpartum depression. With her daughter living with her father, Ukrainian former world heavyweight boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko, Panettiere moved back to Los Angeles after wrapping up six seasons on “Nashville.”

In her memoir, Panettiere described how Brian Hickerson, a real estate agent and once-aspiring actor from South Carolina, initially swept her off her feet. Within weeks, they were living together and barely leaving the house — dancing in her living room, redecorating, playing board games and watching “practically every Netflix series ever made.”

“I finally began to feel beautiful again,” Panettiere wrote, praising his smile and sense of humor. “I also started to feel safe, loved and cherished. It was like Brian and I were two best friends living together under one roof.”

But they also drank heavily together and began fighting, during which she said Brian Hickerson became increasingly violent. He was first arrested in May 2019 on a domestic violence charge, with prosecutors alleging that he “willfully inflicted corporal injury resulting in a traumatic condition upon Hayden P,” People reported.

Following his arrest in May 2019 , Brian Hickerson was ordered to stay way from Panettiere, People reported at the time. That stay-away order was in place when she spent time in New York City with Zach Hickerson.

“They looked very comfortable. Like a real couple,” a source told E! News after they were seen holding hands together during a neighborhood stroll. But if there was a romance between Panettiere and her boyfriend’s brother, it’s unclear when it ended, the Daily Mail reported. A few weeks later, prosecutors in Los Angeles County dismissed the domestic violence charge against Brian, saying “our office was unable to proceed because we could not secure a material witness.”

Reports also said that the 2019 case was dropped after Panettiere accepted his apology. She and Brian Hickerson then resumed their romance, and he was arrested a second time in 2020. That case sent him to jail for 13 days after he pleaded no contest in 2021 to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend, the Daily Mail reported.

But their troubles did not end after Hickerson served time in jail — and neither did their romance and reports of violence. In May 2022, the two got into a fight inside the bar at an L.A. hotel. Following that incident, the two split in July 2022, seemingly for good, the Daily Mail reported.