Three charged in connection with Liam Payne’s death as star’s friend denies claims he ‘abandoned him’

Three people have been charged following the death of One Direction star Liam Payne in Argentina last month.

The singer, who was 31, died after falling from a third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires on 16 October. The police had responded to calls from hotel staff about a man who appeared to be under the influence of “drugs and alcohol” and was found “trashing [his] room”.

Famous names from across the music industry shared messages of condolences while heart-broken fans launched a petition calling for new legislation to protect the mental health and wellbeing of artists in the public eye.

Now, Argentina’s National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office has announced that three people have been charged in connection with the singer’s death.

One person has been accused of “the abandonment of a person followed by death.” The other two, one of whom worked at the hotel, face drug-related charges. None have been named by the authorities.

Prosecutors said investigators had gathered dozens of testimonies, 800 hours of CCTV footage from the hotel and public roads, analysed Payne’s mobile phone and conducted raids on nine homes.

They ruled out suicide and physical intervention by a third party, based on the star’s injuries, and said: “Although other medical background information from the victim’s clinical history must still be analysed, the phenomenon of the lack of defence or self-preservation reflex in the fall, together with other relevant data from his consumption, allow us to conclude that Liam Payne was not fully conscious or was experiencing a state of noticeable decrease or loss of consciousness at the time of the fall.”

This “would also rule out the possibility of a conscious or voluntary act on the part of the victim” and therefore Payne “did not know what [he] was doing nor could [he] understand it”, they added.

Payne’s close friend Rogelio ‘Roger’ Nores has denied claims that he left the former One Direction member ahead of his tragic passing. He has countered allegations that police raided his residence in his home city of Buenos Aires and asserts that he is not under suspicion in the investigation, Nottinghamshire Live reports.

Roger told Mail Online: “I never abandoned Liam, I went to his hotel three times that day and left 40 minutes before this happened.

“There were over 15 people at the hotel lobby chatting and joking with him when I left. I could have never imagined something like this would happen… I’m really heart-broken with this tragedy, and I’ve been missing my friend every day.”

Payne, originally from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, rose to fame as part of the boyband One Direction alongside Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik.

The group were formed on The X Factor in 2010, and, despite only finishing third, went on to become one of the world’s most successful boybands. They released four albums, with Malik leaving in 2015 before a fifth hit the shops.

Members of the band went on “hiatus” in 2016 to pursue solo careers, and Payne released an album, LP1, in 2019. He leaves a son, seven-year-old Bear, whose mother is Girls Aloud singer Cheryl.

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