Hayden Panettiere Was Plagued By Injury From Fall Off Zebra In Her Final Days

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Hayden Panettiere was still dealing with the physical consequences of a bizarre on-set accident more than two decades later.

Panettiere, who died on Sunday at age 36, suffered serious injuries when she was thrown from a zebra while filming the 2005 movie Racing Stripes in South Africa.

Panettiere was just 14 at the time of the accident.

According to her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, the actress suffered whiplash, a concussion, and injuries to two vertebrae after falling from the animal. She later revealed that she largely kept quiet about the severity of her injuries and continued working.

“I kept my mouth shut and endured the pain in my back and neck,” she wrote, explaining that the injuries continued to affect her more than 20 years later.

And that pain appears to have remained a significant problem in the final months of her life.

Panettiere was photographed using crutches at Los Angeles International Airport in March. Around the same time, she was experiencing a frightening episode in which she temporarily struggled to move her legs.

“I quite literally woke up, and felt nothing but pins and needles from my waist down,” she said during a May interview with Women’s Health. “I wasn’t able to bend my toes, lift my foot at all.”

The actress said doctors initially could not determine what was causing the problem.

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“It was like that for so long that I was sitting there going, ‘Oh, my gosh, am I going to be paralyzed for the rest of my life?’” she recalled. “It’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me physically, for sure.”

Panettiere’s longtime friend and hairstylist, Erick Orellana, previously told Page Six that her back problems had become “really severe.”

“At one point, it was even hard for her to move her legs,” he said, though he believed she was “starting to be on the mend.”

Panettiere’s boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, reportedly told police that she was on nine different medications in the days leading up to her death.

The physical pain was just one of several struggles Panettiere faced before her sudden death.

The official cause and manner of death remain pending further investigation. An autopsy found “no signs of trauma” that contributed to her death, according to the Greenville County Coroner’s Office.

For Panettiere, however, the physical trauma from that seemingly innocent movie stunt had followed her for most of her adult life.

And it appears she was still paying the price for it right up until the final months of her life.

Hayden Panettiere Was Plagued By Injury From Fall Off Zebra In Her Final Days was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.