A witness who was in the hotel when Liam Payne died and saw him just minutes before he fell from his third floor balcony said it “didn’t seem real”.
Brett Watson, a hotel guest from Chicago, said he had seen the singer “multiple” times in the lobby of the hotel before his death and was still in the hotel after he died.
He told ITV News: “It didn't seem real.
"You almost had to pinch yourself to understand and process what you were seeing, but it just was an out-of-body experience, surreal.”
Mr Watson said he saw a “frustrated” Payne smash his laptop in the lobby, adding the star seemed to “pass out” before being taken back to his room.
He said: “So we're here with a couple of other guests in the hotel and we were in the lobby just waiting for some people to arrive and that's when we had multiple encounters with Liam.
"Multiple times [Liam] had come down to the lobby, was causing a disturbance, kept being escorted back up to his room."
Staff at the hotel made two calls to emergency services before the star’s death with audio revealing a staff member had asked for assistance for a guest who was “intoxicated by drugs and alcohol”.
Police in the capital said the music star’s hotel room had been “in complete disarray” with “various items broken” – adding that a whisky bottle, lighter and mobile phone had been retrieved from the internal hotel courtyard where Payne’s body was found.
Images shared on-line show his room with a smashed TV and what appears to be foil and traces of white powder on a table.
Tributes have been paid to the singer since his death on Wednesday in Buenos Aires including from his former One Direction bandmates.Fans mourned his death at a vigil outside the Argentine hotel where they lit candles and laid flowers.
