Three people have been charged in connection with the death of former One Direction member Liam Payne.
The singer died aged 31 after falling from a third-floor balcony of the Casa Sur Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, last month.
The public prosecutor’s office in Argentina said three people had been charged with “abandonment of a person followed by death” and supply and facilitation of narcotics in connection with the death of Payne.
According to a translation of the statement, prosecutors said “exhaustive and meticulous measures were taken to clarify the circumstances” around the former One Direction singer’s death.
The statement said: “Based on the evidence gathered and after analysing the various bodies of proceedings and numerous documentary annexes and the background of the case, prosecutor Andres Esteban Madrea formally charged three people, requesting their questioning and arrest in a 180-page ruling presented last Friday to Judge Bruniard.”
Prosecutors said one of the accused was accompanying the singer on a daily basis in Argentina while another was an employee at the hotel where Payne was staying. The third person allegedly supplied drugs.
Nine raids have also been ordered on properties in Buenos Aires and the investigation continues with some of Payne’s devices still being analysed.
The office also said it had completed a detailed analysis of more than 800 hours of video footage from security cameras and obtained several dozen testimonies from hotel staff, family members, friends and medical professionals.
Prosecutors also said there was nothing to indicate any third party was involved in the death while they had also ruled out “self-harm”, according to a forensic psychiatric report.
The statement, translated into English, said: “Although other medical background information from the victim’s clinical history must still be analysed, the phenomenon of the lack of defence or self-preservation reflex in the fall, together with other relevant data from his consumption, allow us to conclude that Liam Payne was not fully conscious or was experiencing a state of noticeable decrease or loss of consciousness at the time of the fall.”
According to the post-mortem examination, Payne died from multiple injuries as well as internal and external bleeding caused by the fall.
His body was found in the hotel’s internal courtyard.
After Payne’s death, police found substances in his hotel room, and destroyed objects and furniture, according to the public prosecutor’s office.
