Liam Payne Apologized for Photo Standing on High-Rise Ledge 10 Years Before Falling to His Death

Liam Payne apologized to fans in 2014 after a photo emerged of him standing on the ledge of a London high-rise, 10 years before the singer fell to his death from a hotel balcony in Argentina.

The photo has re-emerged following Liam’s death at age 31 on Wednesday, October 16. It showed the One Direction alum on the edge of a 34-story apartment building’s terrace at night, as Liam could be seen in a plaid shirt and jeans with the city lights behind him, standing precariously close to the edge.

The snapshot was taken on the night of then-One Direction bandmate Zayn Malik‘s 21st birthday by one of the “Strip That Down” singer’s pals and shared on social media at the time. It was quickly deleted after One Direction fans became alarmed.

“You may have seen a photo of me today taken on top of a building. I regret being there and having a photo taken,” Liam, who was 20 years old at the time, wrote in a January 14, 2014, post on Twitter, now X.

“It scared the living daylights out of me,” one fan wrote in the comments while reposting the photo, while another user added, “You gave us a heart attack.” A fan told Liam, “Well we saw one like two days ago and the whole fandom panicked as we thought you’d fall.”

Liam ultimately died from fracturing his skull and sustaining “very serious injuries” after falling from his third-story room at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel, In Touch can confirm.

An employee at the hotel claimed that Liam “overindulged on drugs and alcohol” prior to his death, according to audio obtained via local media by Telemundo.

“Well, when he is conscious, he breaks, he is breaking the whole room,” the employee told the 911 dispatcher. “Well, we need you to send someone, please.” The staffer added that police were needed “urgently,” saying, “The guest is in a room that has a balcony and, well, we are a little afraid that he might do something life-threatening.”

The “Night Changes” singer opened up in June 2021 about how he battled drugs and alcohol and had “suicidal ideations” during his days in One Direction.

“In the band … the best way to secure us, because of how big we’d got, was just to lock us in our rooms. What’s in the room? A minibar,” he recalled. “So at a certain point I thought, I’m just going to have a party-for-one and that seemed to carry on for many years of my life … It was wild but it was the only way you could get the frustration out,” Liam shared on an episode of “The Diary of a CEO With Steve Bartlett” podcast.

“I was worried how far my rock bottom was going to be. Where’s rock bottom for me?” the singer continued. “And you would never have seen it. I’m very good at hiding it. No one would ever have seen it.”

“There is some stuff that I have definitely never, never spoken about. It was really, really, really severe,” Liam admitted. “And it was a problem. And it was only until I saw myself after that, I was like, ‘Right, I need to fix myself.'”

Liam revealed in a July 2023 YouTube video that he was six months sober after spending almost 100 days a Louisiana treatment facility.

“I just kind of feel like I’ve got more of a grip on life and everything that was getting away from me, I just feel like I’ve got more of a handle on it,” the “Story of My Life” singer told fans. “I just needed to take a little bit of time out for myself actually because I kind of became somebody who I didn’t really recognize anymore. And I’m sure you guys didn’t either. I was in bad shape up until that point and I was really happy to kind of put a stopper to life and work.”