A hotel guest heard a “violent scream” coming from Liam Payne’s room just before he died.
The fellow traveller at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires had previously noticed loud “banging” sounds on the afternoon of 16 October but had put the noise down to renovations or building works.
Shortly afterwards, Liam, 31, fell to his death from his third-floor hotel room’s balcony.
“I thought it was construction,” the guest told People magazine. “I thought they were working on the room.”
The guest added they had interpreted the “banging” noises they heard as “heavy lifting”.
They had observed hotel workers “going in and out” of Liam’s room during the earlier commotion, noticing “more noise” at around 4.30 pm.
Local police attended the property just after 5 pm; however, the loud noises started up again shortly afterwards.
The witness then said, “I heard a really loud, violent scream,” followed by siren sounds.
Liam, a former member of One Direction, suffered at least 25 “internal and external” injuries in the fall that killed him, according to Argentina’s National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office.
A hotel employee had called emergency services in the lead-up to the incident, telling the phone operator a guest was “under the influence of alcohol and drugs” and whose life could be “in danger,” as he was “in a room with a balcony”.
Payne is survived by his 7-year-old son Bear Grey, whom he shared with his former fiancée, Girls Aloud singer Cheryl Cole, 41.
