Liam Payne death update as arrested waiter admits 'fearing for his life'

Waiter Braian Paiz says he shares his remand cell with another 15 people who have nicknamed him "killer" and left him in fear of his life. He claimed he has been burnt, beaten and threatened with electrocution in prison. The 25-year-old, who could face more than a decade behind bars if convicted of selling former One Direction singer Liam Payne the cocaine linked to his fatal balcony plunge nearly a year ago, insisted as he denied any wrongdoing: "I'm just a working lad who crossed paths with a star. Today I'm paying for that coincidence with my freedom."

Argentinian prosecutors confirmed in June Braian and 24-year-old Ezequiel David Pereyra, a former worker at the Hotel CasaSur Palermo where Liam died on October 16 2024 after hiring two sex workers and binging on drink and drugs, would be put on the stand. Paiz, who met the singer in a restaurant he served him at shortly before his fatal fall from the balcony of room 310, has been held on pre-trial detention since January. Like Pereyra he has been accused of selling cocaine to Liam, just 31 when he died, on two separate occasions.

He has previously protested his innocence by claiming he is being scapegoated, but in a prison interview has now made a series of new bombshell claims about the time he spent with the famous Brit.

Recalling the night they got chatting in Cabana Las Lilas, the restaurant in the upmarket neighbourhood of Puerto Madero Braian used to work at and Liam had picked for dinner, he said: "Liam approached me several times, always asking where the toilet was. But what he really wanted was to interact with me. He asked for my Instagram in front of his girlfriend.

"We started talking on a parallel account that he had created just for that purpose. It had no followers, nothing. We never used WhatsApp, as they said in the case. It was always on Instagram and then on iCloud.

"The prosecutor's office deleted all my locations, but I have the screenshots."

Braian said the first visit he paid Liam, on October 2 at the luxury Palacio Duhau - Park Hyatt Hotel in Buenos Aires where he was staying before switching to the CasaSur Palermo, lasted an hour and a half.

Rubbishing wild and hurtful social media speculation about what had happened during their night together at the second hotel, Braian told Argentinian magazine Gente during a 30-minute prison call interview: "There was intimacy but not sexual intimacy."

No date has yet been set for Paiz and Pereyra's trial and sources close to the case said this week they didn't expect it to take place now until next year.

Pereyra, identified by a witness as the man Liam asked to get him "seven grams more" during a brief exchange from a hotel lift filmed on CCTV the afternoon of his death, is being held on remand in Marcos Paz Prison on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

The maximum-security federal prison is known for housing some of the country's most dangerous men including drug lords.

Paiz remains in the same Buenos Aires police cell he has been incarcerated in since the start of the year but is expected to be transferred to a federal prison before the start of his trial.