Former One Direction member Liam Payne was allegedly seen arguing with a mystery woman about money in the lobby of his hotel shortly before he plummeted to his death.
Payne, 31, was seen in a “very tense” conversation with the unknown woman at the CasaSur Hotel in Buenos Aires around 2 p.m. Wednesday, American tourist Michael Fleishmann told the Buenos Aires Herald.
“I’ll give you $20,000 just because I can. I have $55 million and I like to help people,” the “Strip That Down” singer supposedly kept saying.
The woman was speaking Spanish, which was translated for Payne by the hotel manager, Fleishman said.
The singer “seemed very upset, agitated, a little wild, walking around and pacing” and “seemed very energized,” he added.
“It just looked like she was extremely uncomfortable with him, and a little apprehensive,” Fleishmann’s mother, Toni, told the outlet.
“It was just my son, me, Liam Payne, the woman and the staff. The manager was trying to politely intervene or calm him down. There was a feeling of anxiety in the area.”
The Fleishmanns ended up sharing an elevator with Payne, they said.
When they left the hotel a short time later, they saw the woman he was arguing with outside on the phone.
That evening, Payne plummeted to his death from the third-floor balcony of his trashed hotel room.
Moments before the fatal fall, another guest supposedly overheard the dad of one say, “I used to be in a boy band … that’s why I’m so f—ed up.”
Officers who responded found Payne’s hotel room in complete disarray, with the TV smashed and drug paraphernalia scattered throughout.
Payne — who had struggled with drug and alcohol abuse in the past — was found to have died from multiple traumas that resulted in massive internal and external bleeding.
Investigators are still determining if the fall was intentional or accidental.
