One of the last people to speak with Liam Payne detailed the singer’s “disturbing” behavior in his final moments before he fell to his death from a third-story hotel room in Argentina on Wednesday.
A woman named Rebecca was staying at CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires for a friend’s wedding when she encountered the former One Direction band member in the lobby, she told the Daily Mail for an article published Friday.
“I came into the hotel, and he was waiting by the elevator, and it was so clear he wanted someone to recognize him,” Rebecca, who did not share her last name, recalled. “There was something a bit desperate about him.”
The tourist noted that one of her friends was supposed to get Payne’s suite, and staffers were “a little on edge” because he had not checked out and it was already 4:30 p.m.
Rebecca said she was standing near Payne with her friends at the elevator, and while they recognized the “X Factor” alum, they afforded him privacy and did not react to his stardom.
“When the lift came, he suddenly said to us without any prompting, ‘Yes, I’m Liam!’ really drawing it out, and then said, ‘All right, come on, you lot, get in the elevator with me. I love a cuddle,’” she claimed.
Rebecca said she decided to wait for the next elevator, but a few of her friends rode up with Payne and made conversation with him.
“Some of the other girls got in with him, and halfway up, he started saying, ‘Oh, you’re Americans. I live in West Palm Beach. I know Americans. You guys are f–king crazy! You guys are f–king dangerous!’” she remembered.
The hotel guest said Payne then grabbed a woman who she believed he had been “with him” and started “fake-choking her.”
“Only lightly, but the others thought it was really disturbing,” she admitted.
Ten minutes later, Rebecca returned to the lobby, only to see Payne return with his laptop shortly after.
“I have a blind relative, and I realized he had the laptop on its accessibility setting, for some reason, so that each time he moved the mouse, hovering over something, the machine spoke out loud to say where the cursor was,” she recalled.
“I assumed he was doing that for the attention, too,” she continued. “Then 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.”
Rebecca said onlookers were “really shocked” by the “Story of My Life” singer’s outburst.
“It’s a high-end hotel, and his behavior was so out of place — people were just chilling,” she said.
Eventually, Rebecca approached the erratic celebrity to see whether he needed help.
“I went over, asked, ‘Are you OK?’ But he just kind of grunted. Then he said, ‘I used to be in a boy band. That’s why I’m so f–ked up,’” she claimed.
Rebecca said she was taken aback by his comments and “couldn’t believe” he had 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.
Rebecca noted that a British man in Payne’s entourage came over to apologize for his friend’s bad manners and explained to her that he “‘just gets so high sometimes.’”
“I did wonder what these people with him were doing to help him, but maybe they had tried and failed,” she said. “The hotel staff were freaking out and watching him really nervously. I could see one of them was on the phone to what I assumed was security or the police.”
Rebecca described Payne as having dilated pupils and a lack of focus and he was behaving aggressively.
“I’ve never taken cocaine, but he was behaving exactly as I’d imagine someone would on the drug,” she speculated.
Payne re-entered the lobby a third time while Rebecca was still down there, only this time he could not stay on his feet.
“He walked in again and just tripped and fell flat on his face, sprawling across the floor,” she said. “The staff came to help him and get him back in the elevator, and that’s when I took the last photo.”
Rebecca’s picture, which she shared with the outlet, showed Payne chatting with two women as his British friend held the elevator door open for him so that they could go back up to the third floor.
“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 realized the seriousness of what had happened,” Rebecca said.
The shaken hotel guest said a few of her friends witnessed Payne fall from his balcony into the hotel courtyard.
“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,” she said. “It was all so horrible.”
Payne tragically died Wednesday after falling from his third-floor room at CasaSur Palermo Hotel. He was 31.
The former boy bander suffered multiple traumas that led to internal and external bleeding, the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office told Page Six of its preliminary autopsy report Thursday.
Emergency doctor Alberto Crescenti shared that Payne suffered a cranial fracture and “extremely serious injuries that led to his immediate death,” and he was unable to be revived by first responders.
Page Six confirmed alcohol and controlled substances were found in his room, which was completely trashed, following his death.
His former bandmates — Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson — mourned his loss in a heartbreaking statement Thursday.
“We’re completely devastated by the news of Liam’s passing,” the now-defunct group told Page Six.
“In time, and when everyone is able to, there will be more to say. But for now, we will take some time to grieve and process the loss of our brother, who we loved dearly,” they added.