Three people have been charged over the death of One Direction star Liam Payne, authorities in Argentina have said.
The singer died on October 16 after falling from the third floor balcony of a hotel in Buenos Aires.
One of the singer’s accompanists was charged with abusing a person followed by death and supplying and facilitating drugs, according to the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s office.
A hotel employee and a third party were also charged with supplying drugs. None of those arrested have been named.
Father-of-one Payne, 31, became one of pop’s biggest names after appearing on The X Factor and rising to fame with boyband One Direction in the 2010s.
Argentine authorities were investigating Payne last days at CasaSur hotel.
After the singer’s death, the police found things in his hotel room, destroying things and furniture. The hotel staff made two calls to the emergency services saying they had four tourist who consumed “a lot of drugs and alcohol”and “dumps the whole room”, it was previously reported.
on Thursday, the public prosecutor’s office said a toxicology test revealed traces of alcohol, cocaine and antidepressants in his body.
An autopsy determined the cause of his death as “multiple blunt force trauma” and “internal and external bleeding” as a result of falling from the hotel balcony.
According to the prosecutor’s office, medical reports also suggested that Payne may have been partially or completely unconscious.
The prosecutor’s office says this rules out that Payne acted knowingly or voluntarily, and concludes that he was unaware of what he was doing and did not understand it.
In addition, authorities raided nine Buenos Aires homes.
They are still investigating Payne’s broken laptop and other seized equipment.
The prosecutor’s office added that it had examined more than 800 hours of video footage from the hotel’s security cameras and public streets, and received dozens of testimonies from hotel staff, family members, friends and medical experts.
The artist’s body he was released to his family on Wednesday it will be flown back to the UK.
After Payne’s death, tributes poured in including from his former partner Cheryl, his One Direction bandmates and singer Simon Cowell.
Payne’s co-stars Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Harry Styles said in a joint statement that ‘totally destroyed’ and will miss the singer “very much”, adding that “the memories we shared with him will be treasured forever”.
Thousands of fans also remembered the late singer at commemorative events in the UK and around the world.
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