Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer, had multiple drugs in his system when he fell to his death from a hotel balcony in Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires, several local and international news outlets have reported.
An initial toxicology report revealed the British singer, who died aged 31, had drugs in his system at the time of death including “pink cocaine,” according to a report from ABC News on Monday, which cited sources. The recreational drug typically includes a combination of MDMA, ketamine and methamphetamine.
Broadcaster Todo Noticias and several other Argentine media outlets, as well as TMZ, also said the preliminary report found evidence of exposure to cocaine, alongside traces of methamphetamines, ketamine, and MDMA in his system, and benzodiazepines and crack cocaine. NBC News has not been able to independently confirm the reports.
Despite its name, law officials say “pink cocaine” rarely has any cocaine in it and the pink comes from food coloring.
Bridget Brennan, the special narcotics prosecutor for New York, told NBC News in an interview in August, that pink cocaine contains a mixture of substances as is “typical with a lot of the drugs out on the streets.”The final toxicology report not expected to be made public for some weeks, with no public confirmed date for release.
NBC News reached out to Payne’s team and local authorities for comment on the reports regarding the partial autopsy result, but didn’t immediately receive responses.
Payne died shortly after a hotel receptionist called 911 to report that a distressed guest who was intoxicated with alcohol and drugs was “breaking the whole room.”
“The guest is in a room that has a balcony, and, well, we are a little afraid that he might do something life-threatening,” the caller said, according to audio obtained from local media by Telemundo.
Argentina’s emergency health service, Sistema de Atencion Medica de Emergencia, or SAME, confirmed to Telemundo that Payne fell from the balcony of his third-floor room at the hotel in the city’s Palermo district.SAME director Alberto Crescenti told the Argentine TV station Todo Noticias TV that Payne was found dead a few minutes after the 911 call.
An autopsy found that Payne had 25 injuries “compatible with those produced by a fall from height” and that his cause of death was “polytraumatism, internal and external hemorrhage,” the Argentina National Prosecutor’s Office said.
Liam Payne achieved global fame with the English Irish boy band One Direction.
One Direction was formed in 2010 by Simon Cowell after the teens all auditioned separately for The X Factor, a British musical competition.After splitting up, Payne launched a solo career with his 2017 debut single “Strip That Down” which reached number 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Liam Payne’s One Direction bandmates said they were “completely devastated” by his death, they said in a statement on the boy band’s Instagram account last Thursday.
Following the joint statement, Tomlinson, Styles and Malik offered their own personal tributes on Instagram, with Tomlinson and Malik saying they had lost a brother.