A former OceanGate employee warned of safety concerns over the ill-fated Titan submarine years ago

() — A former OceanGate Expeditions employee sent an email to another former company associate years ago with concerns about possible failures of its Titan submersible and an ominous warning about its CEO, who died last month along with four others when the vessel imploded in a dive in the North Atlantic.

“I don’t want to be seen as a killjoy, but I am so concerned that he will kill himself and others in the pursuit of boosting his ego,” David Lochridge wrote of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, according to The New Yorker. The company organized tours for $250,000 a ticket to the 111-year-old wreck of the Titanic.

Lochridge worked as an independent contractor for OceanGate in 2015, and then as an employee between 2016 and 2018, reported. He soon found himself embroiled in litigation with OceanGate, alleging that he was unfairly fired for raising concerns about Titan’s safety and testing.

“I would consider myself pretty bold when it comes to doing things that are dangerous, but that submarine is an accident waiting to happen,” Lochridge wrote in the email to Rob McCallum, a project associate who parted ways over concerns of not classifying the vehicle by a marine certifying agency, The New Yorker reports.

“There’s no way you would have hired me to dive into that thing,” Lochridge continued.

McCallum, a divemaster who has led expeditions to the Titanic, warned Rush in 2018 about the safety of the Titan submersible, telling the CEO he was putting himself and his clients in danger, previously reported.

The OceanGate vessel had been on a planned dive for approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes to reach the wreck of the Titanic when it lost contact with its mother ship on June 18. Several days later, authorities confirmed that the Titan—a 220,000-pound vessel made of carbon fiber and titanium and the size of a minivan—had suffered a “catastrophic implosion.”

The five men on board were identified as Rush, British businessman Hamish Harding, French submariner Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood.

‘s LJ Spaet contributed to this report.