British singer Liam Payne, a former member of best-selling pop group One Direction, died Wednesday aged 31 after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, police and rescuers said.
Minutes after the news broke, distraught fans — most in their 20s and 30s — and onlookers gathered near the scene in the Argentine capital, where medical teams were still at work.
“The news hit me hard,” fan Pilar Bilik, 27, said on the scene.
A police statement announced that “Liam James Payne, composer and guitarist, former member of the band One Direction, died today after falling from the third floor of a hotel.”
The singer had suffered “very serious injuries incompatible with life as a result of his fall,” the head of the city’s SAME emergency medical service, Alberto Crescenti, told local television, adding “there was no possibility of resuscitation.”
Crescenti said emergency personnel rushed to the Casa Sur hotel in the city’s Palermo neighborhood after an emergency call was made at 17:04 PM local time (2004 GMT).
They arrived seven minutes later and “verified the death of this man, who we later learnt was a singer.”
The police statement said the emergency call was made to report “an aggressive man who may be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.”
Payne appeared to have suffered a fracture at the base of his skull from the fall Crescenti said was “about 13 or 14 meters” (about 43-46 feet).
