Picture of Liam Payne MOMENTS before it happened – this is when he went back to his room after being violent and causing a scene on the hotel lobby, he then went back to his room and fell from the 3rd floor.

Liam Payne’s cause of death revealed after tragic plunge: One Direction star had a fractured skull after he fell from third floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires while ‘off his head on drugs’

The 31-year-old plunged from the third floor into the courtyard of the Casa Sur Hotel in Argentina’s capital yesterday afternoon, before medics confirmed his death.

Two forensic pathologists, named locally as Santiago Maffia Bizzozero and Victor Roberto Cohen, reached the conclusions during a post-mortem today in Buenos Aires.

Further tests are now taking place to see if the singer had consumed drugs and alcohol which could have played a contributing factor in the Brit’s death.

The autopsy took place at a city morgue in Viamonte Street a 15-minute drive south-west of Hotel CasaSur Palermo, the boutique hotel where the pop star plunged from a third-floor balcony yesterday around 5pm local time.

Liam’s body was taken last night to the morgue, where post-mortems following deaths in the city centre traditionally take place.

Alberto Crescenti, a director of emergency medical response service SAME, had earlier revealed the injuries Liam sustained in the fall included a fractured skull.

According to the emergency medical team sent to the scene he had a fracture in the base of his skull, extremely serious injuries,’ Mr Crescenti said.

He also told TN television that Payne was dead when paramedics arrived, adding: ‘Our role was to head there quickly, give medical attention, and try to resuscitate him, but his injuries were incompatible with life.’

Payne’s identity was confirmed by emergency services by checking his passport, but police do not yet have conclusive evidence regarding the circumstances of his fall.

The singer fell from a third-floor suite with a balcony overlooking an interior pool and the hotel’s on-site Michelin-star restaurant where he landed in the courtyard.

Police in forensic suits were minutely examining the room and its balcony late last night after their colleagues below erected a red tent on the spot where Payne died.

The patio where he died is next to the swimming pool and is also the site for outdoor tables at the hotel’s plant-based Sarco restaurant. No diners were there at the time, because Sacro closes after lunch at 4pm before reopening for dinner at 7.30pm.

Payne had arrived in Argentina earlier this month for his ex-bandmate Niall Horan’s concert with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy. She left two days ago, but he stayed on.

Around the same time, his ex-fiancée Maya Henry instructed lawyers to issue Payne with a cease and desist letter after accusing him of repeatedly contacting her.

Payne rose to stardom aged 16 after forming boy band One Direction on The X Factor in 2010 alongside Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Harry Styles .

A hotel reception worker made a distressing 999 call requesting ‘urgent’ assistance after Payne had been acting erratically and was escorted back to his hotel room.

The hotel worker made two calls, saying in the first: ‘We have a guest who’s off his head on drugs and is destroying everything in his room. We need someone to come.’

He then phoned back after the line went dead, saying: ‘I don’t know if the guest’s life is in danger. The room has a balcony and we are afraid he might do something.’

Payne was said to have been ‘acting erratically in the hotel lobby and smashed his laptop’ before he ‘had to be carried back to his room’, according to local media.

Seconds later the employee, who identified himself as Esteban, added: ‘Just send an ambulance, only an ambulance.’ Workers had heard a loud sound in the courtyard before the singer’s body was discovered just after 5pm local time (9pm UK time).

A recording of the second call lasting about two minutes and leaked to local media overnight began with the 999 operator saying: ‘Hello, where is the emergency?’