Brian Szasz, the stepson of British explorer Hamish Harding, who is one of five passengers on the submersible that went missing in the North Atlantic Monday, attended a Blink-182 concert in San Diego that night.
Szasz, an audio engineer, shared a photo of himself outside the Pechanga Arena in San Diego, where Blink-182 was playing. “It might be distasteful being here but my family would want me to be at the Blink-182 show as it’s my favorite band and music helps me in difficult times!” Szasz said.
Blink-182, one of the most popular pop-punk bands of all time, reunited in 2022 after a five-year hiatus. The band’s original lineup of Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, and Travis Barker announced the reunion on October 11, 2022, with a new tour and album planned for 2023. The reunion was met with excitement from fans, who had been clamoring for the band to get back together for years. The World Tour 2023/2024, also known as the Rock Hard Tour, kicked off in May.
As if the story isn’t crazy enough already, Brian Szasz also has a connection to the EDM world. In 2021, he was called out online after sending several texts and tweets threatening a “massacre” at the Excision and Illenium shows scheduled to happen in Las Vegas around that time. Excision and Illenium tweeted that his tickets for both shows had been canceled and he was blacklisted by the stadium. He was later arrested for stalking in San Diego.
The missing submersible, OceanGate Expedition’s Titan vessel, was on a mission to explore the wreckage of the Titanic. It was scheduled to return to the surface on Monday morning, but it never made it back.
The U.S. Coast Guard has been using sonar and other equipment to search for the submersible, but the chances of finding the passengers alive are diminishing. The five people aboard the Titan only had about 40 hours of breathable air left on Tuesday, according to Coast Guard officials.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Capt. Jamie Frederick said that the Coast Guard is putting in an “unwavering effort” to locate the submersible but acknowledged that the search is “complex” as it involves combing an area the size of Connecticut, 900 miles off Cape Cod. He said that they also need to deal with the logistics of combining surface and undersea searches in a remote area as well as the chilly temperatures of the Titanic wreck site (36 degrees Fahrenheit).
The families of the missing passengers are holding out hope their loved ones will be found alive and Szasz’s decision to attend the concert has been met with mixed reactions. Some people, including rapper Cardi B, have criticized him for not staying home and watching the news, while others have said that he is entitled to do whatever he needs to do to cope with the situation.
The missing passengers of the Titan submisible include:
- Hamish Harding: The chairman of Action Aviation, which sells aircrafts to Fortune 100 companies, international corporations, heads of state and people in the entertainment & sports industries. He was also one of six people on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin mission last June.
- Stockton Rush: The pilot of the Titan vessel and the founder and CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company running the expedition.
- Shahzada Ghalib Dawood: A Pakistani businessman and philanthropist, Dawood is the chairman of the Dawood Group, a large conglomerate with interests in agriculture, industry, and healthcare.
- Suleman Ghalib Dawood: The son of Shahzada Ghalib Dawood, Suleman is a venture capitalist and investor.
- Paul-Henri Nargeolet: A Titanic expert who has led six expeditions to the ship’s wreckage site. He is known as the “Titanic’s Greatest Explorer” and is also the director of underwater research for RMS Titanic, a company that owns the salvage rights to the shipwreck.
The search for the submersible is expected to continue for several days.
