Former One Direction singer Liam Payne, was found dead on Wednesday after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires in Argentina. Police said in a statement that he fell from the third floor of the hotel resulting in extremely serious injuries. Following this tragic accident fans have been mourning 31-year-old’s death across the world. Amidst this, one video in particular claims to feature the fall of the singer from the building suggesting someone threw him. During the investigation we found the video to be old and not related to the accident.
Claim:
X user oubel shared the viral video with a misleading claim.
Other users too are sharing the same video.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by running a reverse image search on the screenshots obtained from the viral video.
We found the news reports that featured the screenshots from the video.
The report mentioned: According to the CDMX Fire Department, the fire was reported at around 10:05 am today, September 13, on República de Cuba Street, in the Cuauhtémoc municipality. The fire broke out in a room in an apartment on the third floor of the building, at number 56 on the aforementioned street, when a man was inside.
We found a news report from 2023, that stated that a man fell trying to save himself from a fire in Mexico City.
Firefighters from the central station put out the fire to prevent it from spreading to other departments. Members of the Rescue and Medical Emergency Squad (ERUM) treated the injured man and rushed him to the Balbuena General Hospital for prompt treatment.
We also found a post from 2023 on X.
Several other news reports also featured this screenshot.
Conclusion: A 2023 video showing a man jumping from the third floor of a building to escape a fire in Mexico City is now being falsely shared as a recent video of One Direction singer Liam Payne falling from a building. The viral claim is misleading.
