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His autopsy said he died from multiple injuries and external bleeding. Prosecutors also said that Payne’s toxicological exams showed that his body had “traces of alcohol, cocaine and a prescribed antidepressant” in the moments before his death.
Three people have been charged with “crimes of abandonment of a person followed by death, supply and facilitation of narcotics,” in connection with the death of former One Direction singer Liam Payne last month, the Argentinian Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement Thursday.
The three people charged in connection with Payne’s death include a person who accompanied Payne on a “daily basis during his stay in the city of Buenos Aires.” This person was charged with “crimes of abandonment of a person followed by death,” a charge which has a potential sentence of 5 to 15 years in prison, the prosecutor’s office said.
The other two people charged each face charges for “the crime of supplying narcotics,” the prosecutors said. They include a hotel employee who is believed to have provided Payne with two supplies of cocaine while he was staying at the hotel, and a drug supplier accused of providing Payne with supplies of drugs at “two different times on Oct. 14,” according to the prosecutor’s office.
Payne died on Oct. 16 after falling from his third-story hotel room in Palermo, Buenos Aires, according to Argentina state police. He was 31 years old.
Payne’s father, Geoff Payne, departed Buenos Aires with his son’s body, headed to the United Kingdom, on Wednesday. He had been in the country for weeks waiting for authorities to allow him to return to the U.K. with Payne’s body once the criminal investigation had concluded.
The investigation into Payne’s death found he was “not fully conscious or was experiencing a state of noticeable decrease or loss of consciousness at the time of the fall,” causing the prosecutor’s office to rule out “self-harm of any kind.”
“For the prosecution, this situation would also rule out the possibility of a conscious or voluntary act on the part of the victim, since, in the state he was in, he did not know what he was doing nor could he understand it,” the prosecutor’s office said.
“In the moments before his death and in the period of at least his last 72 hours, Payne only had traces of polydrug use of alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his body,” the results of the toxicology tests showed, the prosecutor’s office said.
“All the injuries that Payne had 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,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Police raid homes of hotel workers after Liam Payne’s death
The news comes after two officers close to the investigation confirmed to ABC News that police had raided the homes of hotel employees and a friend of Payne.
Nine raids in total were conducted, with police confiscating cellphones, a hard drive, three laptops and drugs, including marijuana, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Last week, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the investigation told ABC News police had reviewed CCTV footage which appeared to show multiple drug exchanges between a dealer and a hotel employee taking place prior to Payne’s death. Sources at the time said police were investigating if the hotel employee provided Payne with drugs.
Previously, sources told ABC News that a partial autopsy also found that he had multiple substances in his system that day, including “pink cocaine” — a recreational drug that typically is a mix of several drugs including methamphetamine, ketamine, MDMA and others — as well as cocaine, benzodiazepine and crack. An improvised aluminum pipe to ingest drugs was also found in his hotel room, according to the sources.
A preliminary autopsy report from the Argentinian Prosecutor’s Office revealed on Oct. 17 that Payne died from “multiple traumas” and “internal and external bleeding.”
