Former One Direction member Liam Payne dead at 31 after falling from balcony, suffering ‘severe injuries’
Former One Direction member Liam Payne has died. He was 31.
On Wednesday, the UK-born singer-songwriter fell from the third floor of his hotel room at CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, according to local officials, per the Associated Press.
Buenos Aires police said in a statement that Payne’s fall resulted in “extremely serious injuries,” with medics confirming his death on the spot.
Pablo Policicchio, the spokesperson for the Security Ministry of Buenos Aires municipality, told the outlet that the musician “had thrown himself from the balcony of his room.”
Policicchio said cops were dispatched to the hotel in response to an emergency call about an “aggressive man who could be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.”
Per Argentinian news outlets, the hotel’s manager was calling the police to report his disorderly conduct when he heard a thud and found Payne’s body in the hotel courtyard.
Alberto Crescenti, head of the state emergency medical system, explained on Argentina’s Todo Noticias TV channel that Payne fell 13 or 14 meters and “suffered severe injuries that provoked his immediate death.”
“We arrived in time to try and revive him, but there was nothing we could do,” Crescenti said, adding that authorities are investigating the circumstances surrounding Payne’s death and that an autopsy is being performed.
It’s unclear whether the fall was intentional or accidental, and reps for Payne — who said he was having a “lovely day” in a Snapchat video posted hours before his death — did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
TMZ, who was first to report the news, obtained a photo showing Payne’s body lying on the hotel’s wooden deck, surrounded by tables and chairs.
The outlet did not publish the image in its entirety, but the tattoos on the man’s arm matched Payne’s.
Witnesses told TMZ the fall happened shortly after 5 p.m. local time and that the pop star had been acting erratically in the hotel lobby earlier.
He reportedly smashed his laptop and had to be carried back to his room.
Sources told the outlet that Payne — who shares a 7-year-old son named Bear with his ex-girlfriend Cheryl Cole — and his girlfriend, Kate Cassidy, had arrived in Argentina on Sept. 30.
The couple uploaded several social media posts together showing them having fun on vacation.
On Oct. 2, the pair even attended Payne’s former One Direction bandmate Niall Horan’s concert at the Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires.
Cassidy left the country on Monday, and Payne checked into the CasaSur Palermo Hotel.
The late star previously revealed that he hit “rock bottom” during his time in One Direction — which was formed in 2010 and broke up in 2015 — due to his use of alcohol and drugs.
“I was worried how far my rock bottom was going to be. Where’s rock bottom for me? And you would never have seen it. I’m very good at hiding it. No one would ever have seen it,” Payne explained on the “Diary of a CEO” podcast in June 2021.
When host Stephen Bartlett asked his guest whether he had ever experienced “suicidal ideation” during his dark days, the “Strip That Down” hitmaker admitted, “Yeah. There is some stuff that I have definitely never, never spoken about.”
He continued, “It was really, really, really severe. It was a problem. And it was only until I saw myself after that I was like, ‘Right, I need to fix myself.'”
Payne went on to share how much his substance abuse had affected his mental health.
“There were a few pictures of me on a boat, and I was all bloated out,” he recalled. “I call it my pills-and-booze face. My face was just, like, 10 times more than it is now.”
He added, “I just didn’t like myself very much, and then I made a change.”
Payne said that because he and his former bandmates — Horan, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik — got so famous so quickly, they often had to stay in their hotel rooms and turn to the mini bar.
“So at a certain point, I just thought, ‘Well, I’m going to have a party for one,’ and that just seemed to carry on throughout many years of my life,” he remembered.
“And then you look back at how long you’ve been drinking, and it’s [like], ‘Jesus Christ, that’s a long time,’ even for someone who was as young as I was. It was wild, but it was the only way you could get the frustration out in the day.”
Despite his gratitude for being part of the band, Payne lamented that he didn’t always have the “freedom to make choices and freedom to do stuff.”
The “X Factor” alum confessed that he — like many people — turned to an unhealthy lifestyle during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he suddenly went from extremely busy to having nothing to do at all.
In May 2023, Payne revealed he had been sober for more than 100 days.
“I feel amazing. I feel really, really good, and the support from the fans has been really, really good, so I’m super happy,” he told iFL TV at the time.
However, in the wake of his death, a source who knew him told Page Six that he “had been cycling through periods of ruinous behavior for a long time.”
“He was open about his struggles but tried to downplay them at times. His demons were much worse than he let on,” our source said.
In May, Payne’s ex-fiancée, Maya Henry, revealed that she underwent a traumatic medical abortion a few years ago, seemingly when she was dating the heartthrob.
“I definitely did have some complications [following my abortion], and I did have to go to the hospital alone,” she told People while discussing her fictional book, “Looking Forward,” which was “definitely inspired” by events from her real life.
According to the Daily Mail, Henry accused Payne of obsessive contact and began taking legal action against him days before his death.
As for his relationship with Cassidy, Payne came under fire in August for making a “misogynistic” comment to her in a TikTok video.
After Cassidy showed her followers her outfit ahead of a sushi dinner in England, her boyfriend told her with a straight face, “You look good — nice and covered up for once.” Cassidy awkwardly giggled and cut the camera.
