A photograph of Liam Payne seemingly returning to his hotel room in Buenos Aires is reportedly the final image of the singer before he fell from a balcony to his death.
The 31-year-old star plunged 45ft from the third floor into the courtyard of the Casa Sur Hotel in Argentina’s capital yesterday, before medics confirmed his death.
The photo broadcast on local network America TV appears to show Payne wearing a white sleeveless top with his tattoos visible. A presenter said it was the last time the former One Direction singer was seen alive before he got in a lift to his room.
It comes as Alberto Crescenti, head of the city’s emergency services, revealed Payne had a ‘cranial fracture and extremely serious injuries that led to his immediate death’.
He also told TN television that Payne was dead when paramedics arrived at 5pm local time (9pm UK time), adding: ‘Our role was to head there quickly, give medical attention, and try to resuscitate him, but his injuries were incompatible with life.’
Payne’s identity was confirmed by emergency services by checking his passport, but police do not yet have conclusive evidence regarding the circumstances of his fall.
The singer fell from a third-floor suite with a balcony overlooking an interior pool and the hotel’s on-site Michelin-star restaurant where he landed in the courtyard.
Police in forensic suits were minutely examining the room and its balcony late last night after their colleagues below erected a red tent on the spot where Payne died.
The patio where he died is next to the swimming pool and is also the site for outdoor tables at the hotel’s plant-based Sarco restaurant. No diners were there at the time, because Sacro closes after lunch at 4pm before reopening for dinner at 7.30pm.
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Payne had arrived in Argentina earlier this month for his ex-bandmate Niall Horan’s concert with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy. She left two days ago, but he stayed on.
Around the same time, his ex-fiancée Maya Henry instructed lawyers to issue Payne with a cease and desist letter after accusing him of repeatedly contacting her.
Payne rose to stardom aged 16 after forming boy band One Direction on The X Factor in 2010 alongside Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Harry Styles .
The hotel worker made two calls, saying in the first: ‘We have a guest who’s off his head on drugs and is destroying everything in his room. We need someone to come.’
He then phoned back after the line went dead, saying: ‘I don’t know if the guest’s life is in danger. The room has a balcony and we are afraid he might do something.’
Payne was said to have been ‘acting erratically in the hotel lobby and smashed his laptop’ before he ‘had to be carried back to his room’, according to local media.
Seconds later the employee, who identified himself as Esteban, added: ‘Just send an ambulance, only an ambulance.’ Workers had heard a loud sound in the courtyard before the singer’s body was discovered just after 5pm local time (9pm UK time).
A recording of the second call lasting about two minutes and leaked to local media overnight began with the 999 operator saying: ‘Hello, where is the emergency?’
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