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Aunt of teenage victim from Titan submersible said he was 'terrified' about joining the risky trip with his dad, but did it because it fell on Father's Day

Jun 23, 2023, 16:09 IST
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Vice-Chairman of Engro Corporation Limited Shahzada Dawood, who is said to be among the passengers onboard the submarine that went missing on trip to the Titanic wreckage is seen with his son Suleman Dawood in this undated handout picture.Reuters
  • The youngest victim from the Titan submersible vessel was Suleman Dawood, a 19-year-old.
  • Suleman's aunt told NBC News that he embarked on the trip to bond with his father, Shahzada Dawood.
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The aunt of the youngest victim aboard the Titan submersible said that her nephew was terrified prior to the trip and joined in part to impress his father, who was also aboard.

Azmeh Dawood, the sister of the passenger and the British-Pakistani multimillionaire Shahzada Dawood told NBC News that she spoke to her nephew Suleman before the vessel departed. Suleman was "terrified" but went on the trip with his father to bond with him over Father's Day weekend, she said.

Azmeh told NBC News that Suleman "wasn't very up for it" but that her brother Shahzada had been obsessed with the Titanic since childhood.

On Thursday, after rescue officials linked debris to the missing vessel, OceanGate announced that the passengers aboard the ship were dead. The US Coast Guard said the submersible appeared to have imploded because of a "catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber."

An implosion such as that would have happened quickly, lasting only milliseconds, according to the Journal of Physics: Conference Series. It likely killed all the passengers instantly.

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"If you gave me a million dollars," Azmeh told NBC News, "I would not have gotten into the Titan."

Suleman was a "big fan of science-fiction literature and learning new things" and enjoyed playing volleyball, according to the BBC. He studied at the University of Strathclyde and was in his first year at Strathclyde Business School, per the BBC.

His father, Shahzada, was the vice chairman of Engro Corporation, one of Pakistan's largest fertilizer companies, according to the BBC. He ran the telecom and agriculture-focused Dawood Hercules Corporation Limited as well as the Dawood Foundation, an organization focused on education access in Pakistan.

The BBC reported that the Dawood family traveled to Canada from London a month before Shahzada and Suleman embarked on the Titan.

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