Cocaine, antidepressants, indictments: the revelations of the Argentine prosecutor’s office on the death of Liam Payne

Lex-member of the boy band One Direction, the British musician Liam Payne, had consumed alcohol, cocaine and antidepressants before dying on October 16 by falling from the balcony of his hotel in Buenos Aires, said Thursday the Argentine justice.

“The results of the toxicological studies – already communicated to his family – revealed that, in the moments preceding his death and for at least his last 72 hours, Payne presented in his body a polyconsumption of alcohol, cocaine and antidepressants », Indicates the prosecution in a press release, specifying that three people were charged with selling drugs and abandoning a vulnerable person.

Three people charged

Without specifying the names of the people involved, the prosecution specified that the person who accompanied Liam Payne daily during his stay in Buenos Aires is charged with “abandonment of a person followed by death”, an offense punishable by 5 to 15 years in prison, and supply of narcotics.

A hotel employee “faces charges of twice supplying cocaine to Liam Payne during his stay,” and a third person is “charged with twice supplying narcotics at two different times on October 14.” .

The prosecution also confirmed the first results of the autopsy suggesting that the injuries on the victim’s body were compatible with those of a fall and that self-mutilation or “physical intervention by third parties” were therefore excluded.

The autopsy revealed that on Payne’s hands “no ‘defensive’ injuries were found, that all injuries were vital and produced simultaneously with each other.”

In other words, due to these injuries and the position of the body on the ground, the autopsy estimated that “Payne did not adopt a reflex posture to protect himself (in the fall) and that he may have fallen into a state of semi-unconsciousness or total unconsciousness”.

A thesis validated Thursday by the prosecution: “Payne was not fully conscious or was going through a state of notable reduction or abolition of consciousness at the time of the fall”.

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