After the announcement of the death of the artist and former member of One Direction, at the age of 31, many fans gathered in front of his hotel in Buenos Aires, where he was pronounced dead.
The “Directioners” in mourning. British artist Liam Payne, former member of the group One Direction, died this Wednesday, October 16 at the age of 31, after a fall from the balcony of his room on the 3rd floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
A few minutes after the announcement of his disappearance, many fans gathered silently in front of the door of the “Casa Sur” hotel where the death was noted, under the surveillance of a dozen police officers.
“I’m in shock, I can’t believe it. I live five streets away and I thought I had to be there,” Martina Di Lalla, 23, told AFP , who says she was a One Direction fan when she was a teenager.
“I feel like it’s a part of my adolescence that’s been lost,” said Lena Duek, 21, saying the group’s melodies accompanied her from the ages of 12 to 16, and that she hoped One Direction would get back together one day.
“There was no possibility of resuscitation”
With Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik and Harry Styles, Liam Payne formed One Direction, a boy band formed in 2010 on the British show X-Factor and which enjoyed dazzling success until the announcement of a break in 2015.
Since then, Liam Payne had gone solo with a first album LP1 and had enjoyed success thanks to his song Strip that down, released in 2019. Last year, he announced that he was working on a second album and had just released a new single in March 2024.
According to the head of emergency, Alberto Crescenti, Liam Payne had “very serious injuries following his fall”. “We noted the death, there was no possibility of resuscitation,” he declared on local television.
He specified that emergency services had been called at 5:04 p.m. local time and that a medical team had arrived seven minutes later but could only “notice the death of this man” before discovering “later that he was a singer in a group. An investigation into the causes of death has been opened.
According to Billboard magazine, Liam Payne attended a concert by ex-One Direction, Niall Horan, in Buenos Aires on October 2.
