Brian Hickerson spent part of Saturday night in handcuffs on a Greenville sidewalk, yelling at police that they'd leaked details of his girlfriend's death.

Hickerson, who dated actress Hayden Panettiere on and off for years, was caught up in a bar brawl at Wild Wing Cafe with his brother Zach, according to sources cited by TMZ. What began as a few hours of drinking apparently ended with a thrown stool, a scuffle, and a call to Greenville PD reporting an assault.

Video obtained by TMZ shows Hickerson being lifted off his feet by someone behind him during an argument, then carried out of the bar while a bartender shouts for the crowd to let him go. Officers arrived to find both brothers tangled in an altercation with other patrons outside.

Zach, described as visibly intoxicated and yelling profanities at officers, was arrested for disorderly conduct. Hickerson wasn't. But sitting cuffed on the pavement, he reportedly turned his anger on the police department itself, shouting that officers had leaked information when his girlfriend died, per TMZ's account of the incident.

That's a reference to Panettiere, who was found unresponsive at 36 in a Greenville apartment on August 16. She had been staying there with Hickerson. Zach says he was the one who found her, and told TMZ that Hickerson administered Narcan before she could be revived. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

A 911 dispatch has pointed to cardiac arrest and a suspected overdose, but the official cause of death hasn't been released weeks on. The Drug Enforcement Administration has opened its own investigation, and a separate criminal probe is trying to establish whether anyone bears responsibility for what happened.

Panettiere's mother, Lesley Vogel, broke her silence recently and didn't hold back. "This person in her life that we have been trying to get rid of for quite some time was with her at her death, and that was Brian Hickerson," she said, adding that the family had wanted the relationship over for some time.

Saturday's bar fight isn't Hickerson's first brush with trouble. He had already been banned from at least three bars in the area, including a Hooters and a Twin Peaks, reportedly over erratic behaviour while drunk. He was also arrested in West Hollywood in August last year after police found him intoxicated at a restaurant.

None of this answers the question everyone actually wants settled: how Panettiere died, and whether anyone besides her was responsible. The DEA investigation hasn't produced findings yet, and Hickerson's attorney did not respond to TMZ's request for comment on the bar incident.

Until an autopsy report or a DEA finding surfaces, a shouting match on a Greenville sidewalk is about as close as anyone's gotten to news on where this investigation stands.