Liam Payne is dead after a fall from his hotel balcony in Argentina ... TMZ has learned.
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00:00So we are beginning with a real tragedy.
00:03For one of the members of One Direction,
00:06Liam Payne, at just 31 years old, is dead
00:10after something horrific that happened in Buenos Aires.
00:15He fell.
00:16At this point, what we know is that he had a hotel room there
00:22and fell from the balcony.
00:23It is unclear at this moment whether it
00:26was accidental or intentional, but we
00:30do have some details about what people in the hotel
00:33saw, the behavior they saw from Liam earlier in the day.
00:36And it does seem like something was going on, something
00:39that he was very upset about.
00:42But right now, as we're reporting this,
00:45police are still on the scene at the hotel,
00:49and they are investigating this to find out what happened.
00:53But Liam Payne is dead.
00:56One of the members of One Direction, really.
00:59Just 31 years old, Charles.
01:00Absolutely shaking up the music world.
01:04And he had been down in South America.
01:07He actually just had a reunion with one of the One Direction
01:12bandmates, Niall Horan.
01:14But he was down there on vacation,
01:17so he's been there for a few weeks.
01:20Yeah.
01:20I've seen a lot of stuff on social media.
01:22He's posted a lot of things with his current girlfriend.
01:25This was him at the concert at Niall's show on October 2nd.
01:29Things look good, I mean, outwardly at least.
01:32Yeah, but something was going on today at the hotel.
01:35Yeah, super crazy, because a lot of fans have been noticing.
01:38He had been posting with his girlfriend, Kate Cassidy.
01:41They seemed to be having a great time.
01:43They were at like a ranch near Buenos Aires on horsebacks.
01:48But we're told that this all went down
01:50at 5 PM in Buenos Aires.
01:52And there was a ton of commotion there.
01:55We know right now paramedics are on the scene,
01:57fire department, police.
01:59It is a chaotic scene right now at the hotel he was staying at.
02:03By the way, the hotel is called Casa Sur Palermo Hotel,
02:07very fancy hotel in a great area in Buenos Aires.
02:10And right now, it is very grim.
02:12There's a ton of people outside of the hotel buzzing
02:16there to see what happened.
02:18And we're being told by our sources
02:20that he was acting erratic before this happened.
02:23Yeah, and I spoke to someone actually
02:24that was at the hotel.
02:25They were inside the lobby.
02:27This was at least an hour before he fell from correct.
02:33And what they described to me was that he
02:35came into the hotel lobby.
02:37He was carrying a laptop.
02:39And at one point, he started smashing the laptop
02:42all around the lobby.
02:43And what was described to me as a hotel worker
02:46had approached him and said, you know, tried to calm him down.
02:49And then apparently, he was escorted
02:52from what this person says, was escorted up
02:55to his hotel room.
02:57And that's the last that they had seen of him
03:01before this alleged fall had happened.
03:04So we can't speculate as to what had triggered him there,
03:08what something maybe he saw on the laptop.
03:13Look, Liam has talked in the past about struggles
03:17with addiction and even having suicidal thoughts,
03:20though we do not know at this point whether this was suicide.
03:25But obviously, something set him off.
03:26Right, it seems something was going on in the moments leading
03:30up to the fall.
03:31And I mean, this guy was on top of the world,
03:34One Direction on top of the world.
03:36We're talking about getting credit.
03:37Biggest band in the world.
03:38Right, you would think.
03:40And we don't know.
03:40But outwardly, you say, this guy's got everything,
03:42the fame, the fortune.
03:43And it's so sad.
03:45In the past couple of months, though,
03:47there's been some negative stories about him.
03:49We know that his ex-fiancee, Maya Henry,
03:51wrote a tell-all novel that came out not that long ago,
03:55where she had said that he was not a great guy to her
03:58and he was horrible.
04:00And then remember, there was that kind of weird video
04:03of him seemingly talking down to his current girlfriend.
04:07She later said, oh, we were just joking.
04:09Right, and that was, you know what?
04:11Actually, I'd forgotten about that one, Charlie.
04:13But that seemed like something in the moment.
04:16People online gave him some crap for that.
04:19But that wasn't something that seemed lasting.
04:22No, and she stayed with him.
04:23They were just together, like you said, on vacation.
04:26And then there was also other reports
04:28that he was working on an album but couldn't really finish it.
04:32And it was being held up for reasons unknown.
04:35And so now when you kind of line all of these things up,
04:39it makes you wonder what his emotional state
04:42was prior to this happening.
04:45Right, what was the thing that really set him off today
04:49as he went up to the hotel room?
04:51And as far as we know, at this point,
04:53that was the last time anyone in the hotel saw him
04:56before this fall.
04:57And just for someone that young,
05:01at 31 years old and really a very talented musician.
05:05Incredibly.
05:06He was one of the main songwriters with One Direction.
05:09So a real horrific loss.
05:13I'm Dallas Ryan from Bakersfield, California.
05:16I honestly don't think I've been this shocked
05:18by a celebrity death in a very long time.
05:20I'm 25, so I grew up loving One Direction
05:22and listening to music all throughout middle school
05:24and high school.
05:25So I think I speak for everyone my age
05:28when I say that this is very heartbreaking to hear.
05:30Yes, it is.
05:31And obviously we're following this.
05:34Check the website for the latest on anything we find out
05:37in the investigation.