Steve Irwin's Final Moments Captured on Video: Cameraman Hopes No One Ever Sees Gruesome Death
"Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin was not afraid of most things, including snakes, crocodiles, and other reptiles most would avoid. He died in 2006 after being stabbed multiple times by a stingray, and now "best mate" and cameraman Justin Lyons is speaking out about his final moments.
Irwin and Lyons were filming a documentary entitled "Ocean's Deadliest" when they happened upon a stingray. At first nothing happened, but the two wanted to get a shot of Irwin behind the stingray, while Lyons filmed it swimming away. That's when things took a turn for the worse.
"All of a sudden, it propped on its front and started stabbing wildly with its tail, hundreds of strikes within a few seconds," Lyons told Australian TV show "Studio 10." "It probably thought Steve's shadow was a tiger shark, which feeds on them regularly, so it started attacking."
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Lyons was unaware that Irwin had been injured until he refocused his camera directly on Irwin and noticed him standing in a pool of blood. The stingray's barb had gone directly through Irwin's chest.
"He thought it had punctured his lung, and he stood up and screamed, 'It's punctured me lung!' Then he just sort of calmly looked at me and said, 'I'm dying,'" Lyons said.
Irwin's crew got him back into a boat and took off for the nearest hospital, performing CPR for nearly an hour. Once at the hospital, medics pronounced him dead. The whole ordeal was captured on video – Irwin had requested that if anything ever happen to him, the crew was to keep filming. Lyons said he doesn't know, nor does he want to know, what happened to the tape. He just hopes that no one else will ever see Irwin's final moments.
"He was so good with animals," Lyons said. "We thought he was going to live forever."
Daughter Bindi and wife Terri have seemingly picked up where Irwin left off in his work with animals. He also left behind a son, Robert Clarence.
