Liam Payne Death Investigation: 2 Suspects ‘Could Be Arrested’ Soon

The investigation into Liam Payne’s death could soon result in the arrests of two men who allegedly supplied the singer with drugs.

Police could arrest Braian Nahuel Paiz and Ezequiel Pereyra during the holiday season, a court reporter claimed to Us Weekly on Wednesday, December 11. Both are alleged to have provided Payne with cocaine before he died on October 16 after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Paiz, a suspect whom Payne met at the restaurant where Paiz works as a waiter, previously denied supplying drugs to the musician in a November 9 interview with Argentina’s Telefe Noticias. He claimed that Payne “was already under the effects of drugs” as the two swapped information and later met up at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel, where Payne was staying. “We took drugs together, but I never took drugs to him or accepted any money,” Paiz alleged.

Pereyra is an employee at CasaSur alongside hotel manager Gilda Martin and Esteban Reynaldo Grassi, the hotel’s head of security. Martin and Grassi are also facing charges of involuntary manslaughter in connection with Payne’s passing, the source told Us on Wednesday.

Javier Mozo, a reporter at América TV, claimed earlier on the Argentine news station that there are “22 forensic examinations on different cell phones and laptops that the court has requested for the cybercrime division of the city police to investigate. In particular — and pay attention to this detail — there is one forensic piece that investigators and the court find highly significant,” he said. “It concerns the DVR of this restaurant, which is right next door but shares a backyard area with CasaSur.”

According to Mozo, investigators “are trying to see how he fell — this sounds harsh, but it’s the truth — they are trying to understand the seconds before Liam Payne’s body ended up on the ground. It’s public knowledge that his head hit the base of an umbrella. But what they want to determine are the immediate moments before Payne fell from the third floor to the ground floor.”

After the tragedy, Buenos Aires emergency services chief Alberto Crescenti stated that the 31-year-old One Direction star suffered “serious injuries” that first responders were unable to treat by the time they arrived on the scene at the hotel.

Payne’s preliminary autopsy report stated that he died from multiple injuries involving “internal and external hemorrhage” and suffered “multiple traumas” that contributed to his death.

ABC News later reported that a partial autopsy revealed Payne had “pink cocaine” — a recreational drug that typically mixes methamphetamine, ketamine and MDMA — as well as cocaine, benzodiazepine and crack in his system at the time of his death.

The prosecutor’s office announced on November 7 that three individuals were charged with abandonment leading to death and the supply and facilitation of narcotics in connection to Payne’s passing.

Prosecutor Andrés Esteban Madrea had requested the arrests of the three people in a 180-page indictment submitted by Judge Laura Graciela Bruniard.

“The first defendant, a companion of the artist during his stay in Buenos Aires, has been charged with abandonment leading to death — a crime under Article 106 of the Criminal Code, punishable by five to 15 years in prison — in conjunction with the supply and facilitation of narcotics,” the statement read.

The statement continued, “The second defendant, a hotel employee, is charged with providing Payne cocaine on two occasions while he stayed at the hotel, and the third defendant, also a narcotics supplier, is charged with two additional confirmed instances of cocaine supply on October 14. Both are charged with narcotics supply.”

The forensic team also ruled out “self-harm or third-party involvement” in connection with Payne’s death and noted that his “lack of defensive posture upon impact suggests [he] may have fallen in a semi- or fully unconscious state.”

Following the indictment, Payne’s friend Rogelio “Roger” Nores denied being involved in the incident despite visiting the singer’s hotel the day of his death.

“I never abandoned Liam. I went to his hotel three times that day and left 40 minutes before this happened,” Nores told the Daily Mail in a November 7 statement. “There were over 15 people at the hotel lobby chatting and joking with him when I left. I could have never imagined something like this would happen.”

Nores added that he was “heartbroken” by the tragedy and has been “missing my friend every day.”

A report by Rolling Stone on Tuesday, December 10, revealed that a judge was weighing charges against a hotel manager (ostensibly Martin) as well as the receptionist who called 911.

The publication also reported that the receptionist — who made two 911 calls the morning Payne died — is still working at the hotel. Rolling Stone shared details from the 911 call, where the receptionist told dispatchers that a guest had “too many drugs and alcohol” and was “trashing the entire room.”

There was also apparently a second 911 call made in which the receptionist stated that one guest’s life “may be in danger.”

“Are you sending the police as well, or not?” he asked in the second call, per Rolling Stone, asking the dispatcher to “just” send SAME, which is Argentina’s emergency medical service.

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