OceanGate founder crashed a submersible years before Titan disaster

A Filepic of the Titan submersible. Lochridge said he watched warily as Rush haphazardly deployed the submersible, a precursor to the Titan known as the Cyclops 1, and ignored Lochridge’s warnings to keep his distance from the deteriorating shipwreck about 250 feet under the Atlantic Ocean. — OceanGate Expeditions via AP

The CEO who was piloting the Titan submersible when it imploded underwater last year, killing him and his four passengers, once crashed another submersible into a shipwreck and then angrily threw the controls when a tearful passenger begged him to let another pilot take over, according to new testimony on Sept 17.

David Lochridge, who was in charge of marine operations at the underwater exploration company OceanGate until being fired in 2018, described the harrowing trip to a US Coast Guard panel that is investigating last year’s deadly implosion. He said Stockton Rush, the CEO and founder of OceanGate, had insisted on piloting that earlier vessel down to the Andrea Doria shipwreck in 2016, off the Massachusetts coast, over Lochridge’s strenuous objections.