Silke Jasso
Oh man, this video definitely broke me a little bit. Justin Lyons, Steve Irwin’s longtime cameraman, finally revealed the last moments and words the Crocodile Hunter said after he was stung by a massive stingray. Irwin apparently knew he was dying after being stabbed in the chest hundreds of times.
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Lyons was the only witness in the 2006 fatal attack and decided to detail Irwin’s death to quiet the rumors. He revealed the last words he told the Australian zoologist. “We’re saying to him things like, ‘Think of your kids, Steve — hang on, hang on, hang on,'” Lyons told Australia’s Studio 10 morning show. “And he just sort of calmly looked up at me and said, ‘I’m dying.’ And that was the last thing he said.”
Steve Irwin’s Last Words After Stingray Attack
It’s been eight years since his death, but Lyons has said little to nothing publicly about the fatal encounter. He wanted to speak up in order to clarify how he died. Especially since reports several outlets stated Irwin pulled the stingray barb out of his very own chest.
“The stories at the time of Steve’s death — none of them were accurate because no one else was there,” and that always bothered me,” he noted. Lyons also decided to finally talk after finishing his documentary, E-Motion. In it he examines one’s impact that represses negative emotions and how it can affect your body.
“I thought that it was a great way to illustrate my experience with Steve; holding onto these traumatic events can be very, very bad,” he stated. “I’m happy that I’ve finally spoken about it publicly. It has been, I guess, a weight on my shoulders.”
Lyons repeatedly said that he vividly remembers the day his best friend passed. They were shooting a wildlife documentary on the Great Barrier Reef. That’s when the duo spotted a whooping 8-foot-wide stingray. They decided to film the creature for a few minutes and tried to get one final shot of it swimming away. That’s when the animal got frightened and began to wildly start stabbing Irwin with his barb located on his tail. Lyon described the stabs as a hundred strikes within seconds, going through his chest “like a hot knife through butter.” One of the stabs pierced Irwin’s heart.
Steve Irwin’s Biggest Crocodile Battles
“It probably thought that Steve’s shadow was a tiger shark, which feeds on them very regularly,” Lyons said. “I didn’t even know it had caused any damage. It wasn’t until I panned the camera back that Steve was standing in a huge pool of blood that I realized something had gone wrong.”
The camera crew and Lyons threw The Crocodile Hunter into the boat, putting pressure on the gash over his heart which was sleeping a lot of blood. Lyons ultimately performed CPR on his body, but unfortunately, the damage was too severe. The 44-year-old tragically died later that day, leaving his children Bindi and Robert, and wife, Terri.
Lyons said his death was rather ironic since he was known for his dangerous close encounter with sharks, crocodiles, and other potentially lethal animals. But he stated that he always had a sense that Irwin would mean a very unusual death like this one.
“It was never going to be a croc or a shark,” he stated. “He was so good with animals.”
