Charges Filed in Liam Payne’s Death Investigation
The sudden and shocking death of former One Direction band member Liam Payne last month took the world by surprise. And now, more details are emerging about this tragedy. In Buenos Aires, where Payne died after falling from a hotel balcony, Argentine police have charged three people in connection to the death.
The boy band One Direction which included Payne and fellow teen idols Harry Style, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, and Louis Tomlinson had millions of fans across the globe. Even after the band members split up to pursue their solo careers, they remained close friends, evident from Payne’s presence in Argentina last month, to support Niall Horan who was playing a concert in Buenos Aires.
Two weeks after Horan’s concert, Payne was still in Argentina, staying at the CasaSur Palermo hotel. All this while, his Snapchat feed and other social media stories did not hint at anything out of the ordinary. But his stay at the upscale hotel was a troubled one. On the day of his death, the hotel’s reception desk made a call to emergency services about a guest who was “overwhelmed by drugs and alcohol” and “destroying his room”.
Minutes after the call was made, Payne plummeted to his death from his third floor balcony. As news broke, there was an outpouring of grief from One Direction fans worldwide. Tributes poured in from Payne’s admirers, former bandmates, and peers in the music industry, with everyone mourning the tragedy of a young talent taken before his time. There were also a fair amount of questions being asked about how such a thing could have happened in the first place.
With every new detail that emerged, the case was getting murkier. First, toxicology reports confirmed the presence of alcohol, cocaine, and prescription drugs in Payne’s body at the time of his death. Another eyewitness report from the hotel said Payne had been behaving erratically and was seen smashing his laptop. Fans wondered whether it was an accident, a suicide, or something worse.
While the police have still not released all details of the case—forensics teams are still trying to access the contents of Payne’s destroyed laptop—prosecutors have officially filed charges against three unnamed individuals. The charges include abandonment of a person followed by death and the supply and facilitation of drugs. The people charged in the case will not be permitted to leave the country while investigation is underway. Perhaps these charges, filed by Argentina’s National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office, will be the first steps toward closure for those still grieving the loss of Liam Payne.
