Liam Payne Death: Argentinian Prosecutor Charges Trio In One Direction Singer’s Demise, Supplying Drugs
Three weeks after One Direction singer Liam Payne fell to his death at a Buenos Aires hotel last month, officials in Argentina have charged three individuals in the case.
“Illicit conduct was discovered from which three people were charged with the crimes of abandonment of a person followed by death, supply and facilitation of narcotics,” the public prosecutor’s office said Thursday.
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Payne died on October 16 in the Argentinian metropolis after falling off a balcony from his suite on the Hotel Casa Sur’s third floor. Put before a judge late last week by prosecutor Andrés Esteban Madrea, the charges in the 180-page indictment were made public today.
One of the trio charged Thursday was someone who was close to Payne and perhaps worked for him, officials say. The two other persons were a hotel employee and another individual who provided drugs to the singer.
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None of the three has been named publicly.
Additionally, while the public prosector has requested the trio be detained, it seems no one had actually been arrested yet in the 31-year-old performer’s death. “Despite the weight of evidence—including visual, registry, medical, scientific, documentary, and testimonial evidence—investigators continue their work, including attempting to unlock Payne’s personal laptop and other seized devices,” a statement by the public prosector’s office declared.
A postmortem last month said that Payne died due to “multiple trauma” and “internal and external hemorrhage” from the fall. Toxicology test results showed that Payne had alcohol, cocaine and antidepressant medication in his system at the time of his death.
Prosecutors ruled out that the late singer died by suicide, the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office in Argentina said in a press release Thursday.
Payne shot to stardom as part of One Direction, the boy band put together by Simon Cowell on The X Factor UK Season 7 in 2010.
The chart topping group also featured Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik. One Direction put out five studio albums from 2011-15, all of which went platinum in the U.S and the UK, as well as going Top 10 around the world. As a solo artist, Payne himself also had two Top 10 solo singles in the UK with “Strip That Down” and “For You,” the latter from the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack.
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