The desk manager at the hotel where singer Liam Payne was staying in Argentina pleaded with authorities to “send someone with urgency” in a frantic exchange with emergency services prior to his death, according to a transcript of the call confirmed by The Associated Press.
“We need to send someone with urgency because I don’t know if the guest’s life is in danger because he is in a room with balcony, and we are afraid he could do something that threatens life,” the worker told emergency services Wednesday evening, according to the AP.
Payne’s body was found in the inner courtyard of the hotel, where he was pronounced dead on the scene, Alberto Crescenti, the director of SAME, Buenos Aires’ emergency medical services, told ABC News.
“We have a guest drunk with drugs and alcohol,” the hotel manager said on the call. “When he is conscious, he is breaking everything in the room.”
“You said alcohol and drugs?” the emergency services operator responded.
“This is correct,” the hotel desk manager said.
Authorities in Buenos Aires have not confirmed any evidence of drug use present at the time of Payne’s death.
The singer, 31, shared a YouTube video in 2023 in which he revealed he had been sober for six months after spending nearly 100 days at a Louisiana rehab facility.
Payne was staying at the hotel CasaSur in Palermo, Buenos Aires, according to police, when he fell about 42 to 45 feet from a hotel balcony.
Emergency services arrived at the scene at 5:11 p.m. local time, seven minutes after they received the emergency services call, but said there was no possibility of trying to save the man — whose identity was only discovered after he was confirmed dead — due to injuries that were “very serious” and “incompatible with life,” authorities said.
Payne joined One Direction at the group’s inception in 2010 after appearing on the show The X Factor. The group also included Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson.
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