Two women who were allegedly seen visiting Liam Payne’s hotel room hours before he died have been questioned by police, it can be revealed.
The two women – named as Aldana Serrano, 31, and Lucila Goitea, 27, in the Argentinian press – have given sworn statements to the state prosecutor investigating the singer’s death at a boutique hotel in Buenos Aires on Wednesday.
They have been described as being ‘co-operative witnesses’ by sources close to the investigation.
The pair gave statements just hours of Payne’s body was discovered after he plunged from the balcony of his three-storey suite at the CasaSur hotel on Wednesday afternoon.
The women said they arrived at the hotel at 11.30 am and left at 4pm, although they had expected to leave earlier.
The multi-millionaire was seen arguing with one woman in the street about money on the day he died, according to a guest at the CasaSur hotel who told how the singer appeared ‘a little wild’ as he argued with a woman about money.
Michael Fleischmann, from the USA, claimed the former boy band star kept repeating to the woman: ‘I’ll give you $20,000 dollars just because I can.
‘I have $55 million, and I like to help people.’
During the ‘very tense situation’ the woman is said to have spoken in Spanish with the hotel manager translating the conversation to Payne at around 2pm local time.
Mr Fleischmann told the Buenos Aires Herald that he only recognised that the man ‘with an English accent who seemed to be causing a disturbance’ in the lobby was Payne until after news of his death broke.
He added that the singer had ‘seemed very upset, agitated, a little wild, walking around and pacing’ and ‘seemed very energized’.
It was previously reported that Argentine detectives had quizzed three hotel staff and two female escorts.
Payne fell 45ft from the third floor into the courtyard of the Casa Sur Hotel on Wednesday at 5pm local time (9pm UK time), before medics confirmed his death.
The singer died of multiple traumas and ‘internal and external haemorrhage’, a post-mortem examination report said.
Argentina’s National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office No 16 said it was investigating the incident as an ‘inconclusive death’ following the report.
Meanwhile, staff have revealed they were concerned about the star’s access to a balcony prior to his fall.
Employees reportedly feared that the 5ft 10in star was so inebriated he could easily fall over the glass railing of the balcony which is said to stand at a height of around 4ft and was ‘easy to fall over.’
Argentinian police are now hypothesising that he was ‘going through some type of outbreak as a result of substance abuse’ prior to his death.
In the lead up to his death, a panicked hotel worker made two calls, saying in the first: ‘We have a guest who’s off his head on drugs and is destroying everything in his room. We need someone to come.’
He then phoned back after the line went dead, saying: ‘I don’t know if the guest’s life is in danger. The room has a balcony and we are afraid he might do something.’
Payne was said to have been ‘acting erratically in the hotel lobby and smashed his laptop’ before he ‘had to be carried back to his room’, according to local media.