Liam Payne’s ex-fiancée Maya Henry is ‘in shock’ over his death according to a source close to the influencer.
The One Direction star, 31, fell from a third floor of a hotel in the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires.
Now a source close to Henry has told DailyMail.com: ‘Right now she is obviously in shock.’
The model only found out when a member of her team was contacted by a reporter.
Emergency services have erected a red tent outside the hotel.
Several witnesses said Payne had fallen from his room at the Casa Sur Palmero Hotel shortly after 5pm on Wednesday.
Investigations into the 31-year-old’s death are ongoing.
City ambulance service provider spokesman Alberto Crescenti said he had fallen around 40 meters and suffered ‘severe injuries which were incompatible with life.’
He said: ‘The alarm was raised at 5.04pm local time saying a person was lying in an internal patio at Casa Sur.
‘At 5.11pm an ambulance arrived and the man was certified dead.
‘Afterwards we found out he had been a famous singer. Unfortunately the injuries he had suffered as a result of the fall proved to be fatal. There was no possibility of resuscitating him.’
Just days ago the Texan model, 23, instructed lawyers to issue a cease and desist letter to the pop star after accusing him of repeatedly contacting her.
The brunette beauty also accused the singer of obsessively contacting her friends and family including her mother Azteca Henry.
Lawyers for the star told : ‘Maya Henry issued a cease and desist last week to Payne following the emergence of new and concerning information.
‘She has retained attorneys Marco Crawford and Daniel Cerna to represent her. At this time, that is her only comment on the matter.’
Sharing a brutal assessment of Payne with TikTok followers last week, Henry – the daughter of multi-millionaire personal-injury lawyer Thomas J. Henry – claimed he has gone to extraordinary lengths in an attempt to contact her.
‘Ever since we broke up he messages me, will blow up my phone, not only from his phone, it’s always from different phone numbers too, so I never know where it’s gonna come from,’ she said.
‘He’ll create new iCloud accounts to message me – it’s always a new damn iCloud account. Every time I see one pop up on my phone I’m like, “here we f***ing go again.”
‘Also, he will email me… not only me, but he’ll blow up my mom’s phone. Is this normal behavior to you?’
Last week the model also accused Payne of playing on the loyalty of die-hard One Direction fans across social media to pillory her.
Payne made his first public appearance with Henry in 2019 before their stop-start three-year relationship came to an end in 2022, almost a year after the former couple called off their engagement.
The Strip That Down For Me singer has since moved on with new girlfriend Kate Cassidy, while Maya continues to promote her debut novel, Looking Forward – an art-imitating-life romance about a girl who falls in love with a pop star.
She recently opened up about the ‘fictional elements’ to her book, which she claimed is a fiction novel based on true events from her own life.
On a new podcast, The Internet is Dead, Maya addressed how much of the book is fiction and claimed that fans didn’t think it was about her ex-boyfriend.
Noting some of the things she changed, Maya said: ‘Some of the things that are fictionalized in the book are obviously the name changes, some of the cities are different like I say I’m from Tennessee in the book when I’m from Texas.’
Maya then went on to discuss why fans didn’t think the book was about Payne, who is father to his son Bear, six, from his relationship with ex Cheryl Cole.
She said: ‘Then also for example another big point was that people were like this can’t be about Liam because when I was talking about the abortion he said “oh I’m not ready for a kid”, because he is already a father.’
Explaining why she slightly changed the events, Maya said: ‘And in real life that’s obviously not the case, but for privacy reasons I just wanted to leave stuff like that out of the book and just tell my story so that’s kind of why it is fiction.
‘Because if you do something that’s nonfiction everything has to be fiction everything has to be so factual and you can’t leave anything out.’
Revealing that some of the worst parts of her story were omitted from the story, she said: ‘There are a lot of things that are worse than that I did leave out. So it’s fiction inspired by true events.’
The star’s final Snapchat post showed him happily posing with his partner Kate Cassidy as they looked into a mirror.
Further posts from the final moments of the star’s life showed him enjoying lunch in his hotel room, where he revealed the pair had been ‘waking up at 1pm every day’ and deciding on Forest Gump as a Halloween costume.
Another tragic selfie was captioned: ‘Lovely day in Argentina’ before the star shared a photo of his hotel, writing: ‘Happy I got some time away’ followed by a heart emoji.
He shared another image with Cassidy captioned: ‘Quality time.’
Payne began his pursuit to stardom when he initially auditioned for X Factor in 2008.
At only 14-years-old Payne impressed judges with his own version of Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra – but was later eliminated from the show.
However Payne gave his singing career another go auditioning for the competition again in 2010, where he quickly shot to fame as part of One Direction.
He and his former bandmates Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson, were brought together by Simon Cowell and former judge Nicole Scherzinger who saw their potential as a group.
After just a few weeks of getting to know each other and non-stop rehearsing, the group impressed Cowell at their Judge’s Houses audition and sailed through to the live shows.
The pop star later admitted to Rolling Stone that it took him ‘about a millionth of a second’ to spot the group’s worldwide potential.
Following the news of his tragic passing, tributes have poured in for the young pop star.
One friend told the Mail: ‘Liam had been struggling, he just wanted to be a good person.
‘This is a horrible, horrible tragedy. Nobody can believe it. He has the world at his feet, he worked so hard but he just couldn’t quite get over his pain.’
To those who know Payne well, it wasn’t a huge surprise. For some years those close to him have worried for his welfare as he has struggled with the global fame and grueling tour schedules.
While it has been assumed that he has struggled with life after One Direction, friends say that he was a ‘sensitive soul’ before he even arrived for his X Factor audition.
One said: ‘There is perhaps a reason why some people go looking for fame, since childhood Liam was very inward looking, really in touch with his feelings.
‘Then bang, you are singing in front of millions of people on the X Factor. And then you, pretty much overnight, are one of the most recognizable people in the world.’