A friend of Stockton Rush claims the Oceangate CEO designed ‘mouse traps for billionaires’ and accuses him of killing his clients.
Submarine operator Carl Stanley was a close friend of Rush and one of the first passengers on the Titan.
The experimental submarine crashed into the Titanic wreckage last month, killing five people on board, including the CEO.
Speaking to 60 Minutes Australia, Stanley said Rush ‘definitely knew it was going to end this way’ as he recalled hearing about the noise during his dive.
‘He went out with quite literally and figuratively the biggest shock in human history that you can go out with,’ he said.
‘Who was the last person to kill two billionaires at once, and pay them for the privilege?’
Submarine operator Carl Stanley says Oceangate CEO Stockton Rush designed ‘mousetrap for billionaires’
Rush’s friend claims he warned the CEO about an area of the ship that was cracked
Stanley shares the frantic emails he sent Rush warning him about Hull
Stanley also suggested that Rush was willing to risk his life and that of his clients to ‘go down in history’.
He shared how he heard a ‘loud gunshot sound’ during the 2019 Titan with Rush landing in the Bahamas.
Stanley told 60 Minutes, ‘It’s a sound to hear when you go under the sea in a craft that once went down that deep.
The submersible expert recalled telling Rush that he believed there was an area of the hull that was collapsing.
Stanley sent frantic emails warning Rush about the hull and said he even ‘drew a picture of his wrecked sub below’.
Even this was not enough to convince his friend that the ship was not safe.
Stanley said he was shifting between grief and anger because the tragedy, he explained, was both preventable and inevitable.
He had ‘no doubt’ that the explosion was caused by ‘carbon fiber tubes’ – the area he had warned Rush about.
Tourists Hamish Harding, 58, Shahzada Daoud, 48, and his son Sulaiman Daoud, 19, French Navy pilot Paul-Henri (PH) Nargiolet and Oceangate CEO Stockton Rush all died after they sank in the mid-Atlantic in June. 18.
Five passengers began disembarking as Rush piloted the ship. At 9:45 it lost contact with its mothership, the Polar Prince.
He shared how he heard a ‘loud gunshot sound’ while landing on Titan with Rush in 2019 in the Bahamas.
Stanley also suggested that Rush was willing to risk his life and that of his clients to ‘go down in history’.
It took eight hours for the US Coast Guard to report the sub missing after OceanGate Expeditions lost contact.
As a result, there was a huge international response to the rescue of the five passengers. As the hours and estimated oxygen ticked down ships from around the world began to trek in to aid in the search for the missing sub.
Days later, it was announced that five people aboard the sub were believed to have been killed in a possible explosion.
It was also revealed that a US Navy monitoring system picked up the possible sound of an explosion on landing – but search efforts are continuing.
After five passengers were declared dead, it was later revealed that wreckage had been found near the site of the Titanic.
Their investigation began at the end of June, a day after human remains were found during a recovery operation and parts of the ship were brought ashore.
Oceangate campaign CEO Stockton Rush (right) with French Navy veteran PH Nargiolet (left) on the sub
Five people were on board, including British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding (left) and Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleiman, who was just 19.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superintendent Kent Osmond said an investigative team had been formed with the ‘sole purpose’ of determining whether to investigate the crime.
‘Such an investigation will only proceed if, in our examination of the circumstances, a criminal, federal or provincial law is likely to have been broken.’
‘After the US Coast Guard announced earlier this week that wreckage had been recovered from the submarine and that all five people on board were presumed dead, we will now look at the circumstances that led to the deaths.
‘Our investigators are engaged and active in this matter as of this morning. Once it is determined whether a full investigation will be launched, we will provide an update at that time.’