It was 1:50 Sunday afternoon in Greenville, South Carolina, when the emergency phone rang.
A friend of Hayden Panettiere had just found her unconscious inside a residence.
Paramedics arrived minutes later and worked on her at the scene, but were unable to revive her.
The 36-year-old actress, the same one who made the screen tremble as Claire Bennet in “Heroes” and made half the world cry in “Nashville”, was pronounced dead at the scene.
The official police statement is brief and cautious: it refers to “medical assistance” and a “person later identified”, without mentioning a cause of death.
But unofficial reports, citing police sources, speak of a possible cardiac arrest and even a suspected overdose that no one has yet confirmed.
The investigation was left in the hands of the Police Department and the Greenville County Coroner’s Office, which so far have found no signs of violence or anything pointing to a crime.
Her father, Skip Panettiere, a retired New York firefighter captain, asked for privacy to process what he called “an unimaginable loss”. Hayden was going to turn 37 this Friday.