Argentine police raid hotel where Liam Payne fell to death

Argentine police raided on Wednesday the Buenos Aires hotel where former One Direction star Liam Payne died after falling from his third-floor balcony, a police source told AFP. 

Police officers from the special investigations and technology divisions were sent to the Casa Sur Hotel by the prosecutor’s office “to seize elements of interest for the investigation,” said a police source who asked not to be identified.

Television images showed a handful of agents working on computers at the lobby counter.

The 31-year-old British pop singer was found dead after staff called emergency services twice to report a guest “overwhelmed by drugs and alcohol” was “destroying” a hotel room.

He had spoken publicly about struggles with substance abuse and coping with fame from an early age.

Wednesday’s raid came a day after the Argentine prosecutor’s office met with the musician’s father, Geoff Payne, and assured him that his son’s toxicology studies had not been released by that institution.

US media reported on Monday that Payne had a cocktail of drugs in his system when he died.

ABC and TMZ said “pink cocaine” — containing methamphetamine, ketamine and MDMA — had been found during a partial autopsy, citing anonymous sources familiar with the preliminary tests.

The prosecutor’s office said it had not “disclosed any specific technical report outside the exclusive framework of the investigation and the judicial process corresponding to the case.”

Although there is no stipulated deadline for the results of the toxicological analyses, an official from the Public Prosecutor’s Office told AFP that they could be concluded this week.

Investigators were examining cell phones, computers, photographs and videos from security cameras, and have taken “numerous witness statements to reconstruct the victim’s final hours and the scene of the events,” the public prosecutor’s office said.

Post-mortem results indicated that the 31-year-old was alone at the time of the fall and “was going through an episode of substance abuse,” prosecutors have said.

One of the highest-grossing live acts in the world, One Direction went on indefinite hiatus in 2016. Payne went on to enjoy solo success.