Three weeks after One Direction singer Liam Payne fell to his death at a Buenos Aires hotel, officials in Argentina have now 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.
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, the charges have just been made public today.
One of the trio charged Thurday 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.
None of the three have been named.
Additionally, no one had been arrested yet it seems in the 31-year-old performer’s death.
A postmortem last month said that Payne died due to “multiple trauma” and “internal and external haemorrhage” from the fall. Toxicology test results showed that Payne had alcohol, cocaine and antidepressant medication in his system at the time of his death.
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.
