The 19-year-old university student accompanying his father on the Titan expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic was wary about going on the dive, his aunt told NBC News this Thursday.
Azmeh Dawood, who is the older sister of Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, said that her nephew, Suleman, told a relative that he “wasn’t very up for” the trip and felt “terrified” about it.
The teen ultimately decided to go because it was Father’s Day weekend and he wanted to please his dad.
U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said at a press conference Thursday that five major pieces of debris had been found on the seafloor about 1,600 feet from the site of the Titanic, which was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.” Just before Mauger’s press conference, the company running the expedition, OceanGate, announced that the five passengers “have sadly been lost.”
The passengers on board were OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, 61; British billionaire and explorer Hamish Harding, 58; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a 77-year-old French explorer, and Dawood and his son.
“I feel like I’ve been caught in a really bad film, with a countdown, but you didn’t know what you’re counting down to,” Azmeh said. “I personally have found it kind of difficult to breathe thinking of them.”
