Hero diver who helped save 12 children may sue Elon Musk for calling him a "pedo" in shocking rant
The hero British cave diver who played a crucial role in locating and rescuing the 12 football players and their coach from inside a Thai cave last week is reportedly considering suing Elon Musk after the latter branded him as a "pedo" in one of his tweets. The caver, Vern Unsworth was responsible for providing expert mapping knowledge of the cave to an international team of divers.
According to AFP, Unsworth will weigh his options once he gets back home to the UK, meanwhile, he'll be further examining the tweets. On being asked if he would take legal action against Musk, he said, "If it’s what I think it is, yes," before adding that it "ain't finished." Elon Musk referred to Unsworth without using his name and wrote, "sorry pedo guy" on his official account which has more than 22 million followers. Musk further added, "Bet ya a signed dollar it’s true." He later deleted the tweets.
The Twitter backlash came after Unsworth said that the miniature submarine that Elon had offered up in the rescue mission had "absolutely no chance of working." Unsworth had said, "He’s (Elon) just a PR stunt merchant — that’s all he is." Musk's tweets which attacked the hero diver prompted a lot of backlash from people who had taken part in the dangerous mission to rescue the boys from subterranean Tham Luang cave network.
A Danish national and diving instructor in Thailand Claus Rasmussen described the allegations as "inappropriate" and praised Unsworth's role in the rescue. He told AFP: "He was one of the driving forces in getting everything done and clarifying for us divers what was going on." According to Australian broadcaster, ABC, the mission was so risky, the Australian government had negotiated with the Thai authorities to ensure that their diving experts involved in the rescue would not be prosecuted should something go wrong.
The boys and their 25-year-old coach were found almost two weeks ago by British divers, days after they went missing during an outing into the Tham Luang cave network on June 23. The group got trapped inside the cave due to rising waters. The rescue mission proved to be quite the task and was assisted by an international team of experts who made it their priority to get the boys to safety after they had been trapped for 18 days with low oxygen and a limited amount of food and water.
In a CNN interview, the British caver Unsworth told Elon Musk to "stick his submarine where it hurts" and described his offer to help out with the Thai search and rescue mission with a miniature submarine as a "PR stunt.: According to reports, Musk had traveled to the Tham Luang caverns in Thailand and had given the rescuers a six-foot submarine. The billionaire claimed that his submarine would be able to help rescue the boys.
He also sent 10 engineers from SpaceX, Tesla which is his electric car company and the Boring Co. which specializes in tunneling and construction to the cave site. Speaking of the Elon's submarine, Unsworth said that Musk "had no conception of what the cave passage was like. The submarine, I believe, was about five-foot-six long, rigid, so it wouldn't have gone round corners or round any obstacles."
Unsworth had initially pointed out where he thought the football team would be waiting and they were found 200 meters away from the point which was "probably around about the best place they could have been," he said. Unsworth was also responsible for foreseeing the dangers of such an operation and insisted to the Thai authorities that they would need the help of specialist cave divers who had the experience of dealing with such rescue missions before.
"It was a race against time," he said. "They needed world-class divers and that's what we got." At the end of the mission, he said, "Just to get any of them out alive would have been a miracle. But to get 13 out of 13 ... won't happen again. (It's the) biggest miracle ever."
In response to Unsworth's dismissal of Elon Musk's submarine, Musk launched personal attacks on the hero diver and said, "Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it." He even went on to question whether Unsworth was a part of the rescue at all and wrote on Twitter, "Never saw him at the cave." When asked how he felt about Musk's remarks, Unsworth added, "I am not gonna make any further comment about him but I think people realize what sort of a guy he is."
Musk also shared a screenshot of his email exchange with Richard Stanton who was a retired fireman and amongst the first few to reach the soccer team who were stuck deep inside the cave. The emails showed Stanton encouraging Musk to keep developing the submarine. Musk insisted that he was "repeatedly" asked to help by the rescue authorities and declined "several times." "I thought they had it in hand & only agreed to help when Thai SEAL died (deep cave pumps not operating at the time)," Musk said.
All the 12 boys and their coach are now recovering from their ordeal and were put in isolation in a hospital, as doctors checked for any signs of infection they may have caught during their weeks in the dark, bat-infested cavern.