British caver Vernon Unsworth, who helped rescue the Wild Boars soccer team from Tham Luang cave in Thailand’s Chiang Rai province, said Monday he might take legal action against Elon Musk after the Tesla CEO called him a “pedo”.
Musk launched a stinging attack on Unsworth without providing any justification or explanation, after the cave expert slammed his offer of a miniature submarine to extract the footballers from the Tham Luang cave as a “PR stunt”.
Unsworth told Agence France-Presse on Monday he had not reviewed the tweets in full and had only heard about them.
Asked if he would take legal action against Musk over the allegation, Unsworth said: “If it’s what I think it is, yes.” The caver told AFP he would make a decision when he flies back to Britain this week, but said the episode with Musk “ain’t finished”.
“He’s just a PR stunt merchant – that’s all he is,” Unsworth added.
Unsworth, who lives part of the year in Thailand, took part in the gargantuan 18-day effort to retrieve the 12 boys and their coach, a mission that ended on July 10 when the last five members were extracted.
In an interview with CNN, Unsworth noted that the flooded tunnel was extremely narrow and twisted. “The submarine, I believe was about five, six feet long. Rigid,” he said. “So it wouldn’t have gone around corners or around any obstacles. It wouldn’t have made it the first 50 meters.”
Unsworth then claimed that Musk had been quickly asked to leave the cave during his much-tweeted-about visit.
Musk responded Sunday in a bizarre series of tweets referring to Unsworth without using his name as “pedo guy”. “Pedo” is short for pedophile.
