A reporter points to letters wrote by a fans honoring British singer Liam Payne in front of the hotel where he died in Buenos Aires (Getty)
One Direction fans have slammed ‘vile’ trolls who left sick comments mocking Liam Payne’s death in the Google reviews section of the hotel (CasaSur Palermo) where he passed away on Wednesday (16 October).
The singer tragically died after a fall from his third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he’d been staying after originally arriving in the country two weeks ago to watch his former bandmate, Niall Horan, perform. He was 31.
Hotel staff called the police on Wednesday evening with concerns about a guest who they say was “overwhelmed with drugs and alcohol.”
His body was found in an internal patio of the hotel shortly after 5pm local time. Ambulance service provider spokesman Alberto Crescenti said that Liam Payne had fallen around 40 metres and could not be saved.
Scores of celebrities have paid emotional tributes to the One Direction star, including Little Mix’s Perrie Edwards, who cancelled a planned BBC live lounge radio performance on Friday (18 October) as a mark of respect. Fans have also flocked to the CasaSur Hotel in Buenos Aires to leave tributes to the singer.
However, cruel trolls have also taken the opportunity to mock the late singer and make bad taste jokes about his death by flooding the hotel he stayed at with fake Google reviews.
Several of these reviews were then screenshotted and shared on social media, The Mirror reports. One fan shared one of these ‘jokes’ on X (formerly Twitter), saying: “This guy who left a review at the hotel where Liam Payne passed is f**king sick in the head.”
Another person added: “Who does this! They must have read the news and immediately thought ‘I know what I’ll do, I’ll write a review on the hotel, that’ll be funny won’t it’ – these people are sick and need help!”
The Google review controversy comes in the wake of significant anger at publisher TMZ, who recently removed photos of Liam Payne’s body from its website following widespread public outrage.
Breaking the news of his death, TMZ published two cropped photos of Payne’s tattooed arm and torso on the deck of the hotel courtyard as “confirmation” that it was the “Strip That Down” singer who had fallen from the balcony.
Many fans were “disgusted” at the possibility that Payne’s loved ones could have seen the photos before being told of his death by officials.
“It should be illegal to do what tmz have done! Frankly! There is no justification or public interest that warrants it,” writer Mollie Goodfellow shared on X/Twitter, while former VICE editor Zing Tsjeng added: “TMZ posting edited pictures of Liam Payne’s body is absolutely vile behaviour and completely indefensible. What were they thinking?”
Investigations into Liam Payne’s death are continuing. All signs currently point to the fact that Payne was alone at the time of the incident and authorities have ordered a toxicology report.
