Argentine police arrested a waiter Friday on charges of selling cocaine to former One Direction star Liam Payne in the run up to his death in October.

Braian Nahuel Paiz, 24, was arrested at his home in the Buenos Aires suburb of Berazategui in a joint operation by Argentina’s Special Investigations Division and local police, according to information provided by the police. He was then transported to Buenos Aires City.

Some outlets reported that Paiz was arrested in Ingeniero Budge, a different Buenos Aires suburb, but the Herald confirmed that he was detained in Berazategui.

The police also raided the home of another of the accused, David Ezequiel Pereyra, 21, in Lomas de Zamora. However, they have yet to arrest him because he was not home at the time.

Paiz’s arrest comes four days after judge Laura Bruniard charged five people over Payne’s death. Paiz and Pereyra are both charged with selling the former One Direction singer cocaine before he died. They could face four to 15 years in prison if convicted.

Bruinard had ordered both to go to court so they could be taken into pre-trial detention, and froze AR$5 million (around US$5,000) of their assets. Their arrests were ordered after they failed to show up. 

How Liam Payne died

Former One Direction singer Liam Payne died on October 16 when he fell from the balcony in his room at the CasaSur hotel in the central Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo. The investigation into the 31-year-old’s death has found no evidence of foul play. 

Contrary to anonymous reports saying that Payne had consumed “pink cocaine” before dying, results of toxicology tests revealed that in the moments before his death and within his last 72 hours, Payne only had traces of alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his body.

In November, Paiz said in an interview with TV station Telefé that he met Payne at the restaurant where he worked on October 2. “At one point, he came to me and asked for my contact details,” Paiz said. “I gave him my Instagram, and then he sent me messages, because he wanted to do drugs.” 

A fake Insta profile?

He claimed Payne then used a fake profile to invite him to his hotel room late at night, where he smoked cannabis while the singer took cocaine. However, he denied having procured the drugs for him. 

“We took drugs, that’s the truth. Something intimate happened there,” he said at the time. He did not specify what he meant by “intimate.” 

According to a communiqué from the General Prosecutors Office, the judge is accusing Paiz of selling Payne cocaine in the early morning of October 14, which matches the date Paiz said they spent the night together. The judge added that Paiz stayed at the hotel until after 8 a.m. and that a few hours later Payne went to Paiz’s home to buy more cocaine.

David Ezequiel Pereyra was working at the CasaSur hotel when Payne stayed there, and is accused of selling him cocaine in the early hours of October 15 and on October 16, approximately an hour before the pop star died.

The other three individuals charged over Payne’s death are Rogelio Nores, Gilda Martín and Esteban Grassi. Nores, an American-Argentine businessman, was Payne’s friend and manager, and allegedly left the hotel around 50 minutes before Payne died. The other two were employees at the CasaSur hotel. 

Payne ‘couldn’t stand up’

They have been charged with culpable homicide, on the grounds that they negligently abandoned Payne while he was heavily intoxicated and evidently vulnerable. 

Martín, the hotel manager, and Grassi, the head receptionist, were both in the hotel lobby when Payne started yelling and trashing the area, moments before his death. This means they were aware of the singer’s vulnerable state, the judge said. She added that Payne “could not stand up due to substance consumption.”

Bruinard alleges that Martín failed to prevent other staff members from taking Payne up to his room, which had a balcony and was therefore hazardous. Grassi led a group of three people who dragged Payne up to his room, according to security camera footage.

Nores, Martín and Grassi were already facing preliminary charges issued in November by the prosecutor who first investigated the case. 

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