By Nicolas Misculin and Kate Lahey
Buenos Aires: Three people have been charged in relation to the death of former One Direction singer Liam Payne, an Argentine prosecutor’s office has said.
Payne had traces of alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his system when he died, authorities said in a statement.
Those charged are someone who was close to Payne, a hotel employee and a suspected drug dealer, prosecutors said.
Payne, 31, died after falling from the third floor of the Casa Sur Hotel in Buenos Aires on October 16. His body was released to his father, Geoff, on Wednesday to be flown back to the UK.
The charges against the three people include abandoning a person after death and supplying narcotics, according to a statement published by Argentina’s Office of the Attorney-General.
“The first of the accused is the person who accompanied the artist on a daily basis during his stay in the city of Buenos Aires, who is charged with the crimes of abandonment of a person followed by death ... which provides for a sentence of five to 15 years in prison,” the statement says.
Singer Liam Payne in 2022.Credit: WireImage
“The second defendant is a hotel employee who must answer for two proven supplies of cocaine to Liam Payne during the period he was at the hotel.”
Police allege the third person also supplied drugs to Payne two days before his death.
Prosecutors say they took several dozen testimonies, analysed more than 800 hours of security footage, extracted the contents of Payne’s phone, including messages on messaging apps and social networks, and examined hotel guest and bar records. Police also carried out a series of raids at the hotel and several other properties. The investigation is ongoing, authorities are still hoping to unlock Payne’s broken laptop.
Shortly before Payne died, a hotel manager called 911 seeking help for an intoxicated guest. “When he’s conscious, he’s breaking everything in the room. We need someone to be sent, please,” the manager said. Images of Payne’s hotel room show a smashed television and drug paraphernalia.
An autopsy concluded Payne’s death was “caused by multiple trauma” and “internal and external hemorrhage”, the result of his fall from the third-floor room of the hotel in the Palermo neighbourhood where he was staying, the statement said.
Three additional medical-legal reports had been commissioned, the statement said, and they found: “All the injuries … were compatible with those caused by a fall from a height and that self-harm of any kind and/or physical intervention by third parties were ruled out.
“They also highlighted that the victim did not adopt a reflex posture to protect himself from the fall, so, for the moment, it can be inferred that he may have fallen in a state of semi or total unconsciousness.”
On the news of his death, former bandmates, including Harry Styles, said they were devastated.
“Liam lived wide open, with his heart on his sleeve,” Styles wrote, “he had an energy for life that was infectious.”
With Reuters and Nell Geraets
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