'I'm dying:' Cameraman reveals Steve Irwin’s final words after deadly stingray attack
A cameraman who witnessed the death of Australian 'Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin has described how a stingray stabbed at him hundreds of times and his final words were 'I'm dying'.
The television personality and conservationist, who became world-famous for his daring stunts with dangerous animals, died aged 44 in 2006 while filming a documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in far north Queensland.
It’s a jagged barb and it went through his chest like a hot knife through butter
Justin Lyons was the cameraman at the time and shot video of the tragic death, which was later handed to Irwin's widow, Terri, and has never been aired.
In his first public comments, Lyons told Australia's Channel Ten he and Irwin had left their main boat in an inflatable dinghy to find something to film when they came across a "massive" 2.5-metre wide stingray in chest-high water.
The final shot was to be the stingray swimming away from Irwin. Instead, the stingray struck out, apparently believing Irwin's shadow was a tiger shark, one of its predators.
"I had the camera on, I thought this is going to be a great shot, and all of sudden it propped on its front and started stabbing wildly, hundreds of strikes in a few seconds," Lyons said.