A CAMERAMAN who witnessed wildlife expert Steve Irwin being fatally stabbed by
a stingray hundreds of times in a few seconds told how his last words were
“I’m dying”.
Justin Lyons spoke for the FIRST time about the final moments of the Crocodile
Hunter, 44, after the sharp barb went through his chest “like hot butter”
eight years ago.
The pair had finished filming except for a final shot, which was to be the
stingray swimming away from dad-of-two Irwin in shallow water in far north
Queensland, Australia.
But the 2.4 metre ray suddenly struck out; possibly thinking Irwin’s shadow
was a predatory tiger shark.
“I had the camera on. I thought this is going to be a great shot,” Lyons
told Network Ten’s morning show Studio 10.
“All of sudden it propped on its front and started stabbing wildly, hundreds
of strikes in a few seconds.
“I panned with the camera as the stingray swam away and I didn’t know it
had caused any damage. It was only when I panned the camera back that I saw
Steve standing in a huge pool of blood.
“The stingray barb didn’t come out. Steve didn’t pull it out.
“It’s a jagged barb and it went through his chest like hot butter.”
Lyons said Irwin knew he was in trouble and believed the stingray had
punctured his lung during the tragic incident on September 4 2006.
“He had a two-inch-wide injury over his heart with blood and fluid coming out
of it and we had to get him back to the boat as fast as we can,” Lyons said.
“He obviously didn’t know it had punctured his heart … even if we had got
him into an emergency ward at that moment we probably we wouldn’t have been
able to save him.
“I was saying to him things like ‘think of your kids Steve, hang on, hang on,
hang on’, and he calmly looked up at me and said ‘I’m dying’ and that was
the last thing he said.”
The stingray attack and medical treatment were all captured on film, but have
never been released.