Former child actor Jansen Panettiere, Hayden Panettiere's brother, dies at 28

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images Jansen Panettiere at a Los Angeles event in 2015

Jansen Panettiere, who acted in Disney Channel movies growing up alongside his sister Hayden Panettiere, died in New York City over the weekend, according to PEOPLE. He was 28. A cause of death is unknown at this time, but TMZ reports that foul play is not suspected.

Born on Sept. 25, 1994 in Palisades, New York, Jansen's first screen performance was a background role in an episode of Even Stevens on Disney Channel. He went on to do voiceover performances in animated movies and TV shows including Blue's Clues, Ice Age: The Meltdown, and The X's. In the latter, he voiced Truman X, the super-smart scion of a spy family.

Jansen appeared alongside Hayden twice, in the 2004 Disney Channel original movie Tiger Cruise and the 2012 straight-to-DVD film The Forger. He also voiced the younger version of the zebra in Racing Stripes, which starred Hayden in the lead role.

Jansen and Hayden apparently maintained a strong sibling relationship. As recently as Jan. 24, he posted a black-and-white photo to Instagram of Hayden trying to cut his hair. "Not the first haircut she's tried to give me," he wrote.

Jansen's final screen performances were in 2019, in the film How High 2 and a season 9 episode of The Walking Dead. Since then he apparently got more interested in visual art; many of his most recent Instagram posts are pictures of his colorful art pieces, including graffiti and shoe designs. "This is one of my personal favorites," he wrote in the caption for his last post.

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