(Picture: AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
A grieving mother said her husband and son killed within the Titan sub disaster, got back to her as ‘slush in two small boxes’.
Shahzada Dawood, 48, was killed on the dive along with his 19-year-old son Suleman because the doomed OceanGate vessel tried to achieve the Titanic wreck on June 18, 2023.
All five passengers – CEO Stockton Rush, UK billionaire Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul Henry Nargeolet and Mr Darwood and his son were killed ‘instantaneously’ when the sub imploded.
Now Christine Dawood has spoken of the agonising nine-month wait for the ‘bodies’ of her family to be returned from the Atlantic seabed.
‘Well, once I say bodies, I mean the slush that was left,’ she told The Guardian.
‘They got here in two small boxes, like shoeboxes’.
Join for all of the most recent stories
Start your day informed with Metro’s News Updates newsletter or get Breaking News alerts the moment it happens.
The slush is the stays that were recovered from the seabed, which were separated and DNA tested by the US Coast Guard.
‘There wasn’t much they may find,’ she says.
‘They’ve a giant pile they’ll’t separate, all mixed DNA, they usually asked if I wanted a few of that, too. But I said no, just what you realize is Suleman and Shahzada.’
Mrs Dawood told the paper she still has her son’s 9,090-piece Lego model of the Titanic built over two weeks on display in her kitchen.
‘Persons are at all times a bit shocked to see it,’ she says.
‘But what was I going to do? Break it up? Hide it away? Suleman put all those hours in. He’d been fascinated with the Titanic since we went to an enormous exhibition after we lived in Singapore.’
Researchers into the disaster realised the sub will need to have collapsed inwards inside a fraction of a second, killing all five men instantaneously.
On hearing the update, Mrs Darwood, who has written a book about her heartbreak, said: ‘My first thought was, “Thank God”…
‘I knew Shahzada and Suleman didn’t even learn about it. One moment they were there and the following they weren’t.
‘Knowing they didn’t suffer has been so essential. They’re gone, but the best way they went does one way or the other make it easier.’
Because the disaster, Oceangate has suspended its operations and currently has no full-time employees.
Titan report critical of Stockton Rush
A National Transportation Safety Board report states that the faulty engineering of the Titan ‘resulted in the development of a carbon fiber composite pressure vessel that contained multiple anomalies and failed to fulfill needed strength and sturdiness requirements.’
It also stated that OceanGate, the owner of the Titan, did not adequately test the Titan and was unaware of its true durability.
Eight ‘primary causal aspects’ that led to the implosion were identified within the 335-page report, which also criticised OceanGate’s ‘toxic workplace environment’ and ‘disturbing pattern of misrepresentation and reckless disregard for safety’.
The Titan sub was continually used despite ‘a series of incidents that compromised the integrity of the hull and other critical components’.
The sub was product of carbon fibre, which an authority told Metro had ‘never been’ an appropriate material to construct deep water submarines, since it gets weaker with every dive.
OceanGate’s former director of engineering said the primary hull used on the Titan was akin to a ‘highschool project’, the US Coast Guard said.riminal offences’ within the case of Mr Rush, saying he had ‘exhibited negligence that contributed to the deaths of 4 individuals’ and can have been accused of ‘misconduct or neglect of ship officers’ had he survived the incident.
This offence carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years within the US.