1 week Ago By Extra Reporter
During his chaotic final hours, Liam Payne told a fan he had been ‘f***ed up’ by his time in One Direction. The pop star, 31, also smashed his laptop after receiving an email that caused him to fly into a rage, according to guests at the luxury CasaSur Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Troubling details of Payne’s last day alive were revealed by witnesses who saw his erratic behaviour in the hotel lobby after he spent the afternoon drinking in his room with escorts.
The singer was also seen arguing about money with a woman, who is believed to have been one of the escorts, telling her: ‘I’ll give you $20,000 just because I can. I have $55million and I like to help people.’ Payne had been due to check out of the hotel on Wednesday morning, but was still there by late afternoon.
Rebecca – not her real name – an IT consultant from Washington DC, said she saw him acting erratically in the hotel’s lobby at around 4.30pm. She said he told her: ‘I used to be in a boy band – that’s why I’m so f***ed up.
’ Rebecca, 28, one of the last people to speak to the pop star before his death, said she was left ‘shaken’ after the encounter. ‘One of my friends was due to get his suite, so the hotel staff were a little on edge because he still hadn’t checked out at 4.30pm, but also because of his behaviour,’ she said.
She went back to the hotel lobby ten minutes later and soon after Payne , wearing a white vest, cargo pants and trainers, returned with his laptop. He then began reading emails after flopping onto a sofa. Rebecca said: ‘He opened his emails and saw one which obviously upset him.
Suddenly he took the computer, shouted, “F**k this s**t, mate!”, 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 boyband.
That’s why I’m so f***ed up.” ‘I couldn’t believe he’d just come out and said something like that. There was a lot more swearing and he took the laptop over and went to get back in the lift.
’ She said a person whom she believed to be from Payne’s entourage then came over and apologised, telling her: ‘I’m sorry, he just gets so high sometimes.’ A few minutes later, Payne returned to the lobby again. ‘He walked in again and just tripped and fell flat on his face, sprawling across the floor.
The staff came to help him and get him back in the elevator. ‘It wasn’t long after that when the police arrived, and initially we thought they were just going to kick him out, but then when the staff started running around like crazy, we suddenly realised the seriousness of what had happened. ‘Some of my friends had seen him falling, it was awful, and at first they thought he might have just injured himself, but then we saw the body out in the courtyard, and later they brought him out on a stretcher, it was all so horrible.
’ A postmortem examination confirmed yesterday that Payne died instantly after suffering multiple injuries that led to ‘internal and external haemorrhaging’. Argentina’s National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office said it was investigating the incident as an ‘inconclusive death’. Fellow hotel guest Michael Fleischmann, from the United States, claimed that just three hours before Payne’s death the singer seemed to be ‘a little wild’ as he argued with an unnamed woman about money.
He claimed Payne kept repeating to the woman: ‘I’ll give you $20,000 just because I can. I have $55million and I like to help people.’ Mr Fleischmann added that the singer had ‘seemed very upset, agitated, a little wild, walking around and pacing’ and ‘seemed very energised’.
Police in Buenos Aires said the music star’s hotel room had been ‘in complete disarray’, with ‘various items broken’ – adding that a whiskey bottle, lighter and mobile phone had been retrieved from the internal hotel courtyard where Payne’s body was found. Photographs taken inside Payne’s suite, published by the Argentinian magazine Clarin, showed a smashed TV and a table with scorch marks covered with white powder, tin foil and a lighter..
