Liam Payne Death Investigation: Two Arrested as Businessman and Friend Faces Abandonment Charge

The investigation into the death of former One Direction member Liam Payne, who fell from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in October while under the influence of multiple narcotics, has led to the arrest of a hotel worker this week in the country’s capital, according to local media reports. 

A hotel staffer and an alleged local drug dealer were taken into custody, according to local news outlet La Nacion, and authorities have gained access to an Argentine businessman’s home as part of the investigation. The accused staffer is a maintenance employee at the hotel. The two detained individuals are being accused of supplying him with the narcotics found in his system in an autopsy. None of the three men facing charges have been named by authorities in Buenos Aires. 

On Oct. 16, Payne fell from the third floor of the CasaSur Palermo Hotel in the Palermo section of Buenos Aires. According to an autopsy performed immediately after his death, he died of trauma and internal and external bleeding. Inside Payne’s hotel room, according to the Mobile Criminalistics Unit of the City Police in Buenos Aires, substances were discovered that “would be narcotics and alcoholic beverages, as well as several destroyed objects and furniture.” Before Payne fell from the balcony, he had consumed cocaine, La Nacion reports.

The businessman involved in the investigation had reportedly falsely presented himself as the singer’s manager. La Nacion reports that he had failed to notify Payne’s family of the singer’s spiral into a drug-addled state and that the man did not contact authorities following his death and later only spoke with investigators via an attorney. The man is reportedly accused of abandonment of a person, which does not require that he be detained by authorities. 

Police reportedly raided nine locations as part of their probe into Payne’s death. Eight of the locations were related to the three accused individuals in the case while the ninth locale is the rented room of one of two women who were reportedly with Payne in his room hours before his death. The two women, named by their first initials “L” and “R” by investigators, reportedly had been called to the room by Payne through an escort app called Moans. However, La Nacion reports that the two wanted $5,000 from Payne, who refused to pay that amount. The two women left amid an argument with the artist that spilled into the hotel lobby and led to the hotel manager calling the businessman friend of Payne to send funds and end the fracas. 

“L” initially spoke with authorities after Payne’s death but has since vanished from her rented room, according to La Nacion, which reports that a neighbor told the outlet that the room in question is unoccupied, despite a dog’s barking heard behind the door. She is currently being sought by authorities.

Police seized nine cell phones, three computers, two hard drives and a jar of marijuana as part of their investigation, per the outlet.

An email sent by The Hollywood Reporter to Argentina’s National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office No. 14 on Thursday seeking information regarding the arrests and investigation was not immediately returned. 

As news of the arrests broke, Payne’s body was reportedly being transferred to the U.K. on a British Airways flight for his funeral.