Liam Payne’s friend Roger Nores has spoken out about the star’s death and

made a confession about the One Direction star’s apparent drug request

Liam Payne and Roger Nore

A close friend of Liam Payne has insisted no-one could have envisaged the singer would die the way he did.

The One Direction star tragically fell from the third floor of a hotel in Argentina on October 16 last year. Liam’s cause of death aged 31 was confirmed as ‘polytrauma,’ indicating multiple severe injuries to his body.

Now, US businessman and friend of Liam’s, Rogelio Nores, has admitted his close pal had asked him for drugs just like he did another “40 million people” at times. However, he insists he never gave him what he wanted.

Speaking for the first time since Argentinian public prosecutors said they were considering fighting an appeal court decision to drop negligent manslaughter charges against him, Nores said of Liam’s drink and drug-fuelled death: “It was impossible to think everything was going to end the way it did. When he was like that, Liam would ask 40 million people for drugs. He asked me, but I never gave him anything. I never tried drugs. But he managed to get them.”

Liam Payne rose to fame in One Direction ( 
Image:
Getty Images)

Nores also told Argentinian daily La Nacion: “Those last three days I saw him little. Liam had a lot of energy but he wasn’t in a bad way.” The wealthy entrepreneur said last month he was “very happy” after it emerged manslaughter charges had been dropped against him after appeal court judges accepted he was just a friend of Liam’s who was helping him with his business affairs and not his agent with responsibility for keeping him off drugs. A lower court judge charged him late last year along with two hotel workers accused of the same crime of negligent manslaughter, Esteban Grassi and Gilda Martín.

Last week, public prosecutors said they were considering appealing the decision to drop the manslaughter charges against all three men. Two suspects accused of selling Liam cocaine, former waiter Braian Nahuel Paiz and suspended hotel worker Ezequiel David Pereyra, are still in prison after their failed appeals. They have been told they now face continued prosecution.

Nores didn’t appear to be concerned about a potential future appeal. Instead, he told La Nacion in his first comments since the public prosecution statement when asked about the decision to charge him: “Everything’s over. We left it behind. I have no right to victimise myself, there are worse things in life.”

Recalling the last time he saw Liam alive after he intervened to try to resolve an argument about money the former One Direction singer had with the two sex workers he hired, Nores said: “I went to the hotel and Liam told me to leave, saying the problem was his. Until that moment he was fine, as is clear from the hotel CCTV footage.”

Referring to a meeting between Liam and a hotel worker suspect still facing drug charges and the moment he found out Liam had died, he added: “Then he met with a hotel employee and came down all over the place, agitated. He tried to escape. And then they called me… It was horrible, the world stopped.”

Referring to a meeting between Liam and a hotel worker suspect still facing drug charges and the moment he found out Liam had died, Nores added: “Then he met with a hotel employee and came down all over the place, agitated. He tried to escape. And then they called me… It was horrible, the world stopped.”

He had also been quoted in the past month as saying he will continue his £8.1 million separate US defamation lawsuit against Liam’s grieving dad Geoff over claims he made “false” statements to Argentinian prosecutors following the singer’s death unless he gets an apology. However, in his interview with La Nacion, the businessman appeared to offer him an olive branch. Speaking of Geoff’s prosecution statement which is understood to have played an important part in judge Laura Bruniard’s decision to charge him with negligent manslaughter late last year, Nores said: “Liam’s dad was trying to move on from his son’s death in the best way he could. He was suffering, he didn’t understand what he was saying.”

He went on to say he understood they were “looking for someone to blame” but said he hadn’t been afraid of going to jail.