An Argentinian waiter related to the investigation into One Direction member Liam Payne’s death has admitted consuming cocaine with the singer—but says he wasn’t his drug dealer.
Brian Paiz, 24, told TMZ that he snorted cocaine and drank whiskey with the troubled musician just two days before he died in a fall from the third-floor balcony of his Buenos Aires hotel.
“They say I’m the dealer, that I carried drugs, that I sold them,” he told the outlet. “And the truth is that no, no I didn’t sell them.”
Paiz said he and Payne, 31, met at the restaurant where he worked and bonded over their mutual love of drawing. The two partied together for two nights in a row two days before Payne fell to his death.
The waiter said he saw drugs scattered “everywhere” in the singer’s hotel room, including the Dove soap box and tin foil seen in photographs after Payne’s death. He insisted, however, that the two only did cocaine and drank whiskey together.
He also claimed to have never taken money from Payne and said he declined to accept the star’s offer of a Rolex watch as payment.
“I didn’t accept anything, just a drawing that he drew which was part of my eyes, nose and mouth,” Paiz said. “He draws. I draw. I’m studying to do it so I had drawings.”
Paiz is one of three individuals identified by Argentinian police in their investigation into the singer’s death, according to TMZ.
All three suspects are being sought for arrest and questioning in connection with criminal counts including “abandonment of a person followed by death” and “supply and facilitation of narcotics,” according to the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office No. 14.
