BUENOS AIRES: 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 analyzes, 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.

SEOUL: North Korean propaganda leaflets apparently carried by balloons were found scattered on the streets of the South Korean capital Seoul on Thursday, including some making personal attacks on the country’s president and first lady.
The leaflets attacking South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee found in the capital appear to be the first instance of the North Korean government directly sending anti-South propaganda material across the border.
They included graphic messages accusing the Yoon government of failures that had left his people living in despair, and describing the first couple as immoral and mentally unstable.
The resumption of a campaign by Pyongyang to send balloons into its neighbor comes as tensions on the peninsula have spiked with the North accusing South Korea’s military of sending drones over Pyongyang to violate its sovereignty.
Since late May, North Korea has been sending thousands of balloons often carrying trash into various parts of South Korea saying it was to retaliate for propaganda leaflets sent the other way by South Korean activists criticizing the North’s leadership, with Pyongyang accusing Seoul of being complicit.
South Korea’s military said early on Thursday that North Korea had again sent balloons carrying suspected trash and they were headed to the capital region and the eastern part of South Korea.
The Presidential Security Service said in a statement trash dropped from North Korean balloons was found around the presidential office but it posed no security or contamination risk. It did not provide further details of the material.
The North Korean balloons have caused some property damage as they landed in the South including starting small fires from the trigger that releases the trash but otherwise were retrieved by authorities without incident.
The South Korean government has declined to say if drones were flown toward the North or who may have sent them.