Two charged and friend investigated over Liam Payne’s death
Two people have been detained and one other person is under investigation over the death of One Direction star Liam Payne, who died in Argentina last month after falling from a hotel balcony.
On November 7th, police in Buenos Aires detained a hotel worker and a person alleged to be a drug dealer. They also raided the home of a friend with who Payne had spent time during his stay in the country.
The authorities have accused the hotel worker and the alleged drug dealer of supplying the late pop star with narcotics that were found in his system after his fatal fall from the third floor of the hotel he had been staying in.
The friend, a local businessman, is accused of abandonment of a person, but is not being detained. If he is found guilty, he could face up to six years in prison. According to a local publication, the friend posed as Payne’s “manager”, and was with him on the day of his death.
As reported in La Nación, the authorities raided nine locations around the city in connection with Payne’s death, eight of which were said to be related to the three accused parties. The ninth was the home of one of the two women who Payne had been with in the hours leading up to his death. During the search, the police seized nine cell phones, three computers, two hard drives, and a jar of marijuana.
A toxicology report found that the pop star had used multiple drugs before falling to his death on October 16th, including ‘pink cocaine’ – a mix of methamphetamine, ketamine and MDMA – benzodiazepine, cocaine, and crack. His body was flown back to the UK yesterday.
Tributes to Liam Payne
Tributes poured in following the death of the 31-year-old star, who reached international fame as a teenager in the popular boy band One Direction. In a joint statement on Instagram, his former band mates wrote, “We’re completely devastated by the news of Liam’s passing. In time, and when everyone is able to, there will be more to say. For now, our thoughts are with his family, his friends, and the fans who loved him alongside us.”
Reflecting on the pressures of early fame, Bruce Springsteen added his voice to the conversation, saying “It’s a business that puts enormous pressure on young people. Young people don’t have the inner facility or the inner self yet to be able to protect themselves from a lot of the things that come with success and fame. So they get lost in a lot of the difficult and often pain inducing [things]… whether it’s drugs or alcohol to take some of that pressure off.”
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