A court in Argentina dropped charges of criminal negligence against three of the five people indicted in connection with the death of Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer who fell from a third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires last October, according to a ruling obtained by The Associated Press.
The ruling drops charges against three key defendants: Rogelio Nores, an Argentine businessman with U.S. citizenship who had accompanied Payne during his trip in Buenos Aires; Gilda Martin, the manager of the CasaSur Hotel in the trendy neighborhood of Palermo where Payne died on Oct. 16; and Esteban Grassi, the hotel’s main receptionist.
The charge of negligent homicide carries a sentence of one to five years in prison in Argentina.
In its decision issued Wednesday, the Argentine federal appeals court ordered the other two defendants in the case to remain in custody. They are facing prosecution on charges that they supplied the British pop star with narcotics.
Police have released new details about former One Direction singer Liam Payne’s death in Buenos Aires, including a recording of a 911 call made by a hotel employee just before the singer fell from a third-floor hotel balcony. Autopsy results confirm that Payne died from that fall.
A toxicology report from tests taken after an autopsy revealed that Payne, 31, had alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his system when he fell from the balcony.
Prosecutors argued that Nores had failed to comply with his duties of care by leaving Payne alone while inebriated. The court sided with defence lawyers who contended that Nores had no legal, moral or social duty to care for Payne. He also was outside the hotel at the time of his friend’s death.
The two hotel employees, Martin and Grassi, were in the CasaSur hotel lobby on Oct. 16 when they saw Payne severely intoxicated and decided to take him to his room with the help of others, investigators determined.
A funeral for One Direction singer Liam Payne was held in Amersham, England, on Wednesday, more than a month after the 31-year-old fell to his death from a hotel balcony in Argentina. While some fans remembered Payne outside the church where his bandmates attended the memorial, people in his hometown of Wolverhampton were disappointed the ceremony wasn’t held there.
Prosecutors said that Payne should have been kept away from his hotel room, where a balcony posed a clear danger, until he could receive proper medical care. On Wednesday, the court ruled that prosecutors failed to prove how taking Payne to his hotel room “constituted unlawful, unruly, clumsy, reckless, imprudent or negligent conduct.”
The court also ordered the other two defendants in the case — Ezequiel David Pereyra, a former employee at the CasaSur hotel and Braian Paiz, a waiter who had served Payne at an upscale Buenos Aires restaurant — to remain in detention on charges that they supplied Payne with narcotics in the days, even hours, leading up to his death.
Because the charge they face carries a sentence of four to 15 years in prison, the court said that preventative detention was justified.
Payne’s sudden death drew an outpouring of grief around the world from heartbroken fans of One Direction, among the best-selling boy bands of all time.
