Buenos Aires police hunt Liam Payne’s drug dealer

Police in Argentina are interviewing five witnesses as they attempt to reconstruct the One Direction singer’s final moments before he fell to his death from a hotel balcony, as his father retraces trip.

Geoff Payne, left, the father of the late musician Liam Payne, is spotted standing on the balcony from which his son tragically fell, looking down at the deck below. Picture: BACKGRID Australia

Police in Argentina are interviewing five witnesses as they attempt to reconstruct Liam Payne’s final moments before he fell to his death from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires.

The singer’s room on the third floor was “in complete disarray”, officers said, with photographs showing drug paraphernalia and a broken television.

Police were called to reports that Payne, 31, a former member of the boy band One Direction, was smashing up his room before he fell. Investigators have seized his phone in the hope of tracing the drug supplier.

Liam Payne and former partner Cheryl Tweedy in 2018. Payne is survived by the couple’s seven-year-old son, Bear.

Dropped by record label

Payne had been due to check out of the four-star CasaSur Hotel on Wednesday morning, but was still there in the late afternoon. Two women who were with him in his room left shortly before he fell that evening.

He is said to have been dropped by his record label and had received a restraining order from his ex-fiancee, the Texan model Maya Henry. Hours before his death he was seen in the hotel lobby arguing with a local woman.

Shortly afterwards he appeared with a laptop. A fellow guest said he “opened his emails and saw one which obviously upset him ... and started bashing the computer on the ground. I went over, asked ‘are you OK?’ But he just kind of grunted. Then he said ‘I used to be in a boy band. That’s why I’m so f---ed up’.”

Fans gather to pay tribute to late British singer Liam Payne, former member of the British pop band One Direction, at Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, on October 20, 2024. (Photo by Bertrand GUAY / AFP)

Payne, who was 16 when he appeared on The X Factor and joined One Direction in 2010, had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. He has a seven-year-old son, Bear, with his former girlfriend Cheryl Tweedy, of the girl group Girls Aloud. Earlier this year he moved into a rented dollars 9,500-a-month house in Florida with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy, an American social media influencer.

The Times