• last year
Liam Payne's fatal fall was witnessed by a hotel guest who was at the CasaSur Palermo in Buenos Aires for his wedding, and he is haunted by what he saw.

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People
Transcript
00:00We're going to start with a documentary that you're hopefully going to see tonight on Fox at 8 o'clock Eastern.
00:08It's called TMZ Investigates Liam Payne, Who's to Blame?
00:12And we basically explore two angles to this.
00:16What happened and who is responsible.
00:19The what happened, we have nailed.
00:22Yes, because we've spoken to just about everyone that was with Liam in the days and hours leading up to his death.
00:28So we've pieced together all of that, and I think when you see all of that, it's going to help you to decide who really is to blame here.
00:35You know, there are five people that prosecutors are going after for different crimes, alleged crimes, involved with Liam Payne's death.
00:43All of them involving supplying Liam with drugs.
00:47In one case, his good friend, Roger Norris, alleging he abandoned Liam, that he had that responsibility.
00:54But here's what we do know, and we've pieced this together by interviewing two of the people who are going to be charged and reaching a third as well.
01:03But also, we have 179 pages of official documents.
01:09Here's what happened.
01:10Liam was off the rails in the lobby about a half hour before that fatal fall.
01:17And when the people from the hotel carried him upstairs by his arms and legs, they put him in his room and they left him there alone.
01:27We know what happened.
01:29Liam was trying to leave the hotel via the balcony.
01:34He was on a third floor balcony, which is actually four levels above because there's a mezzanine.
01:40And he was going to drop down to the second level, where he had actually put a bag.
01:46He had actually lowered a bag onto the second floor.
01:50He was going to go there and then jump to the ground.
01:53We know what happened.
01:54He slipped and fell.
01:56And we even have the marks from the railing that show that.
02:00So he was trying to scale down, something he had done in the past.
02:05The big thing now is, who's responsible for this?
02:09Look, the prosecutors think that it is an alleged drug dealer, who, by the way, we also speak to in this documentary, obviously Roger.
02:19And then there are three other hotel employees, one of them a hotel manager, that they're going after.
02:26So who's really to blame here?
02:27Now, there's another person we spoke to.
02:29Well, but before, just so you know, you mentioned the person who allegedly sold him drugs.
02:34We talked to him.
02:35He's a waiter.
02:36Liam invited him to the room twice.
02:39His name is Brian Paez.
02:41And Brian told us he didn't sell Liam anything.
02:46They did recreational cocaine.
02:48They did drugs together, but he says he did not sell him anything.
02:51And Charles, and it wasn't even the day he died.
02:57It was two days before.
02:58That's right.
02:59Yet they're charging him.
03:00It's odd.
03:02Yeah, very odd.
03:04Someone else that we spoke to is someone who was in the hotel that day, not only in the hotel, but had the misfortune of actually seeing Liam's fatal fall.
03:17He was there actually for his wedding.
03:20And here is what he said really threw that whole day off for him because as he's there getting ready to get married, then suddenly finds himself in the middle of this tragedy.
03:31We saw Liam fall.
03:33He landed face up.
03:35So we could tell right away that it was Liam.
03:40And he was motionless.
03:43That must have been gut-wrenching for you to see.
03:47Yeah.
03:50It's one, it's just seeing anyone fall like that is heartbreaking.
04:01But being able to see it happen and then hear the impact on the ground, which is more haunting than seeing him fall and then seeing the immediate aftermath.
04:17It's something that has been burned into my brain and something I'm never going to forget.
04:27And I'm still working through trying to process and understand everything that we saw.
04:37Just back from Argentina and what an adventure it was to cover this story because the Argentinian justice system does not function at all like the justice system here in the United States or the one in the United Kingdom.
04:48It's just not the same level of transparency.
04:50It took us days to develop the documents that actually laid out the case against the three imputados, as they are referred to in the Spanish language.
04:59We finally had a chance to meet face-to-face with the prosecutor to get a debrief and he told us that there would be more people arrested.
05:06And sure enough, as our special goes to air, there are now five people named in connection with the case.
05:12And, you know, the question, yeah, they're going after a waiter.
05:16They're going after his friend, who, by the way, doesn't have a contract to protect Liam.
05:21They're going after a hotel employee who got him drugs.
05:27Now, they are going after the hotel now.
05:29Right, because clearly the two latest people that they're going after does make it seem like prosecutors are finally acknowledging that people at the hotel may have some responsibility here.
05:40Because the two people, one of them is the person who called 911 and the other is a general manager at the hotel.
05:50And so it seems like they're at least putting some of that possibly or allegedly on them for the treatment of Liam in those moments before he died.
06:00And here's why we think that those two other individuals were named.
06:05I spoke with a gentleman who was a massage therapist who was working that day and was actually photographed in the security camera carrying Liam to the elevator.
06:15And we asked him who gave the order, who made the decision to pick up Liam.
06:20And he told us it was the female manager of the hotel and the male front desk manager and that he merely just assisted as they carried him to the elevator.
06:31And, you know, look, in the special, one of the things that comes up is, is Liam responsible?
06:39I mean, Liam had a huge drug problem.
06:42And, you know, when a celebrity dies, especially where it is drug related, one of the drills from prosecutors is go after somebody.
06:54Because everybody's looking high profile.
06:57Everyone's looking. We've got to get go after someone.
07:00And the person who provided drugs is almost always the easiest person to find.
07:05But the problem here is it's not like it was fentanyl.
07:09It's not like they didn't give him something that he didn't want or didn't know he was getting.
07:14Again, this is on tonight. And I think.
07:17Tonight on Fox, eight o'clock, seven central.
07:19Open a lot of eyes.
07:20Yeah.
07:21Hey, guys, this is Andrew Lopez from Las Vegas.
07:23And talk about a bad omen right before your big day.
07:27I mean, you were literally planning your happiest day coming up, you know, going to be married and have to look up at the exact moment that you're watching.
07:34Now you're watching Liam Payne fall from the sky to the ground and have to hear that and be a part of that experience.
07:40I mean, and then have to turn around and then answer whether or not you want chicken or fish for the reception dinner.
07:45I mean, that is obviously a traumatizing experience.
07:48And now this man is going to have to go about the rest of his life having to live with that haunting imagery any time he thinks of a wedding or even just the word planner for that matter.
07:57No, he is he is struggling with this.
07:59I can tell you.
08:04You.

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