'You're dead anyway': What OceanGate CEO told passenger on Titan sub
‘You’re dead anyway’: Discovery Channel cameraman reveals what OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told him would happen if they got lost while bolted inside Titan submersible
- Documentary cameraman Brian Weed said Stockton Rush had showed a ‘cavalier attitude’ towards basic safety
- The veteran camera operator said he was uneasy from the start, which was exacerbated when Rush said ‘you’re dead anyway’ if the sub ever got lost
- It comes after the former finance director revealed she quit after Rush asked her to take the controls of the sub after firing the chief pilot over safety concerns
A documentary cameraman who went on a test dive in the doomed Titan sub has told how the company’s CEO said ‘very strange’ things.
Brian Weed had been working for the Discovery Channel’s ‘Expedition Unknown’ TV show in May 2021 when he boarded the Titan sub which imploded last month.
Once aboard, Weed told Insider about a ‘very strange’ conversation he had with Stockton Rush aboard the Titan.
He said: ‘Well, there’s four or five days of oxygen on board, and I said, ‘What if they don’t find you?’ And he said, ‘Well, you’re dead anyway.’
Weed continued: ‘It felt like a very strange thing to think, and it seemed to almost be a nihilistic attitude toward life or death out in the middle of the ocean.’
Brian Weed, pictured here, had been working for the Discovery Channel’s ‘Expedition Unknown’ TV show in May 2021 when he boarded the Titan sub
Weed described Stockton Rush, pictured here, as having a ‘cavalier’ attitude towards basic safety
Weed said that Rush’s attitude towards ‘basic safety’ was ‘cavalier’ and made him feel ‘uneasy’ from the start.
Weed said the test dive was plagued with mechanical and communications issues and had to be aborted.
‘That whole dive made me very uncomfortable with the idea of going down to Titanic depths in that submersible,’ Weed said, adding that it just didn’t feel safe.
Weed pulled out of the documentary project over safety concerns, and the ‘Expedition Unknown’ production was also later canceled.
Rush died aboard the submersible, which imploded on descent to see the wreck of the Titanic last month.
Onboard with him had been one of Pakistan’s richest men, Shahzada Dawood, alongside his son Suleman, British billionaire Hamish Harding, and French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
The sub lost communication with its operator, OceanGate Expeditions, less than two hours into its dive to the famous shipwreck last month, with five people on board.
A large-scale rescue operation including planes and a fleet of vessels had been scrambled to the area 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada, as oxygen supplies in the sub dwindled.
French Navy veteran PH Nargeolet (left) was on the sub along with Stockton Rush (right), CEO of the OceanGate Expedition
Five people had been on board, including British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding (left) and Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, who was just 19
The five men on board all died after the Titan sub imploded on its expedition
It was then announced that the five men on board had been killed instantly after the submersible suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion’.
Last week, debris from the submersible was hauled ashore in St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.
Weed’s comments come after an unnamed finance director that worked at OceanGate said she had been asked to take the controls of the doomed Titan.
Huge chunks of metal are unloaded from the Horizon Arctic ship at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada
The unnamed staffer said after chief pilot David Lochridge was fired for raising safety concerns in 2018, she couldn’t trust late CEO Stockton Rush.
She told the New Yorker: ‘It freaked me out that he would want me to be head pilot, since my background is in accounting, I could not work for Stockton.’
Lochridge was fired in 2018 after OceanGate disagreed with his demand for more rigorous safety checks on the submersible, including ‘testing to prove its integrity.’
Source: Read Full Article