Investigation into Liam Payne’s death prompts 3 arrests, Argentinian authorities say…..

Three people have been charged in the Oct. 16 death of 31-year-old singer Liam Payne in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

On Thursday, the local prosecutor’s office announced the investigation into the circumstances of the former One Direction star’s fall from a hotel balcony resulted in three suspects being criminally charged “with the crimes of abandonment of a person after death, supply and facilitation of narcotics.”

Prosecutor Andrés Esteban Madrea, head of the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office in Argentina, said in the statement that one of the suspects is a person who allegedly accompanied Payne daily during his time in the city of Buenos Aires. They are charged with the “abandonment of a person followed by death,” which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

The second is a hotel employee who is accused of supplying the singer with cocaine twice during his stay, and the third person is alleged to have supplied drugs twice on Oct 14, two days before Payne’s death. Both are charged “with the crime of supplying narcotics”

Following a more than two-week investigation involving raids, cell phone analysis and toxicology tests, last weekend Payne’s body was released to his father, Geoff Payne, who had flown to Argentina following his son’s death.

According to the prosecutor’s office, Payne’s stay at the Casa Sur hotel began Oct. 13. Investigators believe at least four narcotics deliveries were supplied to the singer in the days before his death.

The internal and external injuries Payne sustained were “compatible” with a fall from a third-floor balcony, according to Madrea, and third-party involvement was ruled out. Testing found Payne had traces of alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his system in the 72 hours before his death.

Investigators currently believe he was in a state of partial or full unconsciousness at the time of his fall, and they ruled out the possibility that the fall was voluntary.