Liam Payne's good friend who Buenos Aires authorities want to prosecute for "abandonment" knew Liam had fallen off the wagon but still left him alone ... so claim prosecutors in an official document obtained by TMZ.
00:00We have dug deep. We have people in Argentina and we have more information about Liam Payne's death and it is mysterious and really troubling and interesting all at the same time.
00:14So this has to do today with a guy named Roger Norris. He was Liam's good friend who accompanied him to Buenos Aires.
00:24He is in the crosshairs of prosecutors now over alleged abandonment of Liam. Liam's dad, according to the documents we've seen, claims that Roger was in charge of the care of Liam knowing that Liam was in the throes of addiction and substance abuse.
00:46Right. What Liam's dad had said is that Roger had volunteered basically to keep Liam on the straight and narrow. But prosecutors arrived at this abandonment charge after they saw basically an incredible bender, all the evidence of a bender that Liam went on starting the night before his death.
01:10And they claim that Roger knew all about this and yet still left him an hour before his death.
01:19And they have now we're going to get into whether they've actually charged him with abandonment, which is a crime in Argentina. We will get into that in a minute.
01:27But in these documents, they outlined the hours before Liam died in terms of what his state was, because we know Roger is saying he was fine when I left.
01:39At four o'clock. Prosecutors have a different version of this. He died just after five p.m. So we're going to take you first to the night before. And this is what they laid out.
01:49Right. Ten p.m. ordered four bottles of whiskey. Then at six thirty six a.m. ordered five more bottles of whiskey and then texted Roger to say that he was going to have sex with a with a hooker.
02:06And then at nine thirty two a.m. he texts Roger. Can you get six grams? Clearly he's referring to cocaine. Yes. Then Roger. First of all, they had breakfast. Roger shows up at the hotel.
02:21They had breakfast in the room. And according to hotel staff who's told this to police, they had whiskey or rather Liam had whiskey with his breakfast. Right.
02:32So Liam is on a bender here. So let's go back. So then now at about eleven thirty, these two prostitutes show up at the hotel with the the prostitutes told police they had sex with Liam and then he asked them for cocaine, said that he'd run out.
02:51And then when they asked to get payment, he got flipped out, got pissed off, broke the TV television. And we have pictures actually of this broken television. Yeah. He smashed the TV.
03:02So let's go on now. So now we're getting toward the time of the fatal fall, two o'clock in the afternoon. He tells a hotel employee, I'm going to need another six grams for today.
03:13Seven grams. Seven grams. Excuse me. From today. Three forty five. Roger Norris comes back to the hotel to pay the prostitutes. The hotel had actually contacted Roger. Roger had told them that if you need anything, call me, call me.
03:29So they call him. He comes back to pay the prostitutes four o'clock. Now, this is about an hour before Liam falls off that balcony. One of the staffers says he is visibly drunk with dilated pupils.
03:44Four oh four. Roger leaves the hotel. This is about an hour before the fatal fall. And a housekeeper hears this loud, loud breaking of objects inside the room. Liam was trashing the room.
03:57So now we get to the fact that Liam is going down to the lobby causing a disturbance and they end up picking him up forcibly by the arms and legs, putting him in the elevator, taking him up to the room.
04:12Liam then leaves the room the first time, goes back downstairs, according to these documents, passes out in the elevator, but then regains consciousness, goes into the lobby. And now you see these screen grabs from the surveillance video where they take him back up a second time.
04:31Yeah, and they try and they that's when they put him in the room and they lock him in there. And that's when they call 911. They say we're worried about the balcony. And then minutes later, he falls off the balcony.
04:45So we should, as we said, Roger's story, Rod, people close to Roger said that what he told police is that when he left, he was fine. He was fine at four o'clock. I understand that he said that one of these versions can't be right.
05:01I mean, we just ran through everything that he was doing starting the night before. I don't know how someone is possibly. I mean, look, I don't know. I don't know how you could be in your right mind.
05:13So all of that. So here's the twist in all of this. So the federal prosecutor in Argentina wants to charge Roger with both abandonment and supplying him with drugs.
05:28So we did a very deep dive, and it seems based on what we know now from the documents that a judge said to this federal prosecutor, you can't do this with abandonment. It's not a federal offense. It's a local issue. So the prosecutor seems to have lost the ability to prosecute him for abandonment federally.
05:53And the locals have done nothing. There is still is this drug charge. But I have to tell you, look, I'm a lawyer in America. And the system in Argentina, now that we've dug deep, is very hard to understand. But it looks like this federal prosecutor, even though they're saying and we know they're saying this, we still have the case. It looks like they don't when it comes to abandonment.
06:20Yeah, I don't. And because the local prosecutors haven't done anything, I just don't see how that's going to be something going forward. It always seemed like a weird charge, right?
06:31It seems like a very weird charge to me.
06:33The other two people that were also charged, they haven't spoken out yet or, you know, given their play by play as to what their turn of events were or what their timeline was.
06:42So the other two people charged mostly were for the drugs.
06:44With the drugs. There's a waiter and a hotel employee. We know what the waiter is saying, that the waiter is saying, yeah, I did drugs with Liam, but I didn't sell them to him. So, you know, now, you know, you're right on this abandonment thing. I got to say, there is no formal document that a court issued saying you are the conservator of Liam.
07:08So Roger, Roger, Liam's dad is saying that Roger promised to do it. But then the issue is promised to do what? To be around him 24 hours to do exactly what? To tell him you can't have drugs when he says, you know, get out of my room. I want to be alone.
07:24So it seems really weird. It seems odd to me, given that there's no court order making him the caretaker for Liam, that they could pin that on him.
07:36Right. And that's why it doesn't seem like this abandonment charge is going to go anywhere.
07:41Hi, I'm Ashley from Chicago, and I'm feeling incredibly conflicted about this situation because on one hand, I'm sure the guilt that this man has to live with over knowing the role that he may or may not have played in his friend's death.
07:55You know, that's worse than any prosecution you could ever get. But at the same time, I can't help but wonder if something nefarious is going on, because why would you leave a friend in a state like that? There's no way that he didn't know.
08:06Yeah, and we know what Roger's answer to that is, which is Liam was a strong-willed person. And when he says, I want to be alone, he said, I'm a free man and I can exercise free will.
08:22So what do you do in a situation like that? So I think that's where there's this big problem with abandonment.
