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Liam Payne death inquest: 3 charged over Liam Payne’s death, self-harm ruled out as cause of death
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Liam Payne death inquest: 3 charged over Liam Payne’s death, self-harm ruled out as cause of death

Three people have been charged with “crimes of abandoning a person followed by death, supplying and facilitating narcotics” in connection with the death of former One Direction singer Liam Payne last month, Argentina’s Public Prosecutor’s Office announced on Thursday in a statement.

The three people charged in connection with Payne’s death include a person who accompanied Payneon “daily during his stay in the city of Buenos Aires.” That person was charged with “criminal abandonment of a person, followed by death,” a charge that carries a potential sentence of 5 to 15 years in prison, prosecutors said.

Payne died on October 16 after falling from his third-floor hotel room in Palermo, Buenos Aires, according to Argentina’s state police. He was 31 years old.

Liam Payne poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of 'Ron's Gone Wrong' at the BFI London Film Festival 2021 in London, Saturday, October 9, 2021.

Liam Payne poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of ‘Ron’s Gone Wrong’ at the BFI London Film Festival 2021 in London, Saturday, October 9, 2021.

Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP

Two other people each face two counts of “felony supply of narcotics,” prosecutors said. The two accused were a hotel employee believed to have supplied Payne with two supplies of cocaine while he was staying at the hotel and a drug supplier accused of supplying Payne with drug supplies at “two different times on 14 October”. according to the prosecutor’s office.

The inquest into Payne’s death also found that he was “not fully conscious or experiencing a noticeable state of decline or loss of consciousness at the time of the fall”, leading the prosecution to rule out “self-harm of any kind”.

“For the prosecution, this situation would also exclude the possibility of a conscious or voluntary act on the part of the victim, since, in the state in which he was, he did not know what he was doing, nor could he understand it.” said the prosecutor’s office.

RELATED | Liam Payne’s body will be released to his family, police sources say

“In the moments before his death and during the period of at least the last 72 hours, Payne had only traces of polyuse of alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his system,” the results of the toxicology tests showed, the prosecutor. said.

Payne’s death was caused by “multiple trauma” and “internal and external bleeding,” the result of the musician’s fall from a hotel balcony, the autopsy found, according to the prosecutor’s office.

“All injuries sustained by Payne were consistent with those caused by a fall from a height and that self-injury of any kind and/or physical intervention by third parties was excluded,” the Prosecutor’s Office stated.

Police raided the homes of hotel staff after Liam Payne’s death

The news comes after two officers close to the investigation confirmed to ABC News that police searched the homes of hotel employees and a friend of Payne’s.

In total, nine raids were carried out, with police seizing mobile phones, a hard drive, three laptops and drugs, including marijuana, according to the prosecutor’s office.

This is a breaking news update. Stay tuned for the latest on this developing story.

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