Friend of passenger on board missing sub says ‘he wasn’t nervous at all’
A longtime friend of Shahzada Dawood, one of the passengers on board the missing submersible in the North Atlantic, is describing Dawood as “selfless” and “courageous.”
Muhammad Hashim, 48, a businessman who has known Dawood since childhood, reflected on his missing friend’s sense of adventure.
“He wanted to explore the world and he wanted to go to places where very few people can go,” he told NBC News on June 21.
Hashim noted that Dawood, 48, had previously traveled to Antarctica, Iceland and Greenland, and enjoyed river rafting.
“He was very adventurous,” he added. “But from inside he was a very soft kind and very selfless kind of a person, and he was a very courageous guy.”
He also told NBC News that Dawood “wasn’t nervous at all” about the Titanic mission.
Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood, 19, have been missing since Sunday. They are among the five passengers who were on board the Titan, a privately owned submersible craft that was diving in the North Atlantic to explore the wreckage of the Titanic.
Three others were on board the submersible when it went missing Sunday: billionaire Hamish Harding and the sub’s pilot, Paul Henry Nargeolet, as well as Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, the company that owns the vessel.
Harding, a British adventurer who also previously flew to space on the Blue Origin NS-21 mission, was reportedly thrilled to be embarking on this dive to see the Titanic’s wreckage.
“When I saw Hamish last week at the Global Exploration Summit, his excitement about this expedition was palpable,” Richard Garriott, president of The Explorers Club, said in a June 19 statement. “I know he was looking forward to conducting research at the site.”
Urgent rescue efforts have been underway this week to locate the missing sub, with the U.S. Coast Guard joining forces with Canadian and French teams to search for the vessel by sea and air.
On Wednesday, a Canadian military aircraft detected underwater noises in the search and rescue area off the Canadian coast, according to the Associated Press.
The source of these noises could not be confirmed, but they sparked hope in some that the sub’s passengers might still be alive and signaling for help.
The race to find the missing craft is growing increasingly frantic, as the Titan’s oxygen supply is now believed to be at its end. The vessel had about 96 hours, or four days, of life support when it went missing.
Hashim says he has been in a “state of shock” over the incident, and has been having trouble sleeping.
He said Wednesday he was still praying for his friend’s safe return.
“We are just keeping our fingers crossed and we are just praying to Allah that a miracle happens and he comes back,” he said. “We are still hopeful that Shahzada, he will come back.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
