The girlfriend of former One Direction member Liam Payne left Argentina two days before the 31-year-old star was found dead after he fell from the third-floor balcony of the CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires Argentina.
Influencer Kate Cassidy, 25, had traveled to Argentina with Payne for a short vacation amid their two-year romance and had returned to Florida before the tragedy.
The influencer hails from Harrington Park, New Jersey — just northwest of New York City — and attended Northern Valley Regional High School, according to Daily Voice Bergen County.
She later graduated from Coastal Carolina University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in the spring of 2021, according to an Instagram post where she was holding a black graduation cap and gown.
Cassidy has over 200,000 followers on both TikTok and Instagram and often posts about her outfits, food travel and adventures she would go on with Payne.
How did One Direction alum Liam Payne meet Kate Cassidy?
Cassidy revealed she was a waitress when she met the pop star at a bar in Charleston, SC.
“On the way to work my manager texted me and was like ‘Liam Payne from One Direction is here, you’re going to be taking care of him tonight,’” Cassidy said in a TikTok video uploaded Sept. 20,
The content creator claimed Payne repeatedly asked her to sit at his table and eventually asked for her number. She forgot to put the +1 before her area code so he initially had issues contacting her.
Eventually, he figured it out and took her to lunch, bowling, and a ghost tour the next day.
The “What Makes You Beautiful” singer was first spotted with Cassidy in October 2022 when the pair went to a Halloween party in London dressed as Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson.
The next month, Cassidy showed off Payne in a mirror selfie posted on Instagram while they were in Rome.
The couple has frequently appeared on the red carpet over the years, including a documentary premiere that his former bandmate Louis Tomlinson produced in March 2023. She claimed they would often go bowling too.
Payne was previously engaged to model Maya Henry from 2020 – 2021 and had a kid, now 7 years old, with British singer Cheryl Cole.
Why did Cassidy and Liam go to Argentina?
According to Kate’s TikTok, the couple went to see his former One Direction bandmate, Niall Horan, perform in Argentina on Oct. 2.
Before they went to the concert, Payne uploaded an Instagram story saying that he and Horan had things “to square up” during the trip because it’s been a while since they spoke and have a lot to discuss.
“We’re going to Argentina,” he said. “One, because we want to. Two, because we want to. And three, because Niall Horan’s playing down there and I think we might just go and say hello.”
He insisted that there were “no bad vibes” but still reiterated that a talk needed to happen.
During the trip, Cassidy admitted their stay was longer than planned while sharing their time in the country on TikKok showing them riding horses, seeing Horan’s show and eating lots of food.
Liam Payne’s death
Local police say the “Night Changes” singer fell from the third floor of the CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires and sustained “extremely serious injuries” on Wednesday.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Before the fatal fall, there were reports of an “aggressive man” who seemingly was under the influence of a substance. According to TMZ, eyewitnesses claim the “X Factor” alum was spotted slamming his computer in the hotel lobby and had to be carried to his room.
Payne said he was having a “lovely day in Argentina” in a since-deleted Snapchat post before his untimely death.
Pablo Policicchio, a representative for the Security Ministry of Buenos Aires, claimed that the former boy band member “had thrown himself from the balcony of his room.”
Why did Cassidy leave Argentina ahead of Liam Payne’s death
The 25-year-old influencer told TikTok followers on Monday that she left South America to travel to Miami when her short vacation turned into a two-week stay.
“I was so ready to leave, honestly, love South America but I hate staying in one place for too long,” Cassidy revealed in a TikTok video. “We were supposed to be there for like, five days [then] it turned into two weeks and I was just like, ‘I need to go home.’”
During the video, she said that she purchased a new travel pillow because she let Liam, who stayed behind in Argentina, use her squish pillow.
Her latest post was commenting about her age when someone at Spirit Halloween accused her of being a mother and she was offended.
