Eight Years Later, Steve Irwin’s Cameraman Describes His Last Moments

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PopWrapped Admin

Published

March 10, 2014

Courtesy of Getty Images

Nicole MacDowell
Staff Writer
@MusicalNikki13

Justin Lyons was the last person to speak to beloved wildlife expert Steve Irwin.

Now, eight years after his death, Lyons is opening up about what really happened on that fateful day in 2006. Lyons went on Studio 10, an Australian morning show to talk about Irwin’s final moments.

“We were saying to him things like, ‘Think of your kids, Steve, hang on, hang on, hang on. And he just sort of calmly looked up at me and said, ‘I’m dying,’ and that was the last thing he said,” he told viewers.

He also talked about what really happened on the boat after Steve was stung, dispelling the rumors that Irwin had provoked the docile stingray.

“All of a sudden it propped on its front and started stabbing wildly with its tail, hundreds of strikes in a few seconds,” he said. “It probably thought that Steve’s shadow was a tiger shark, which feeds on them very regularly. … I panned with the camera as the stingray swam away, 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.”

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Lyons then spoke of how he pulled Steve from the water and later performed CPR to try and rescue the Crocodile Hunter. He also said that Steve believed that the barb had punctured his lung and that the film crew always believed that he would live forever.

“It was probably always going to be something weird with Steve. I mean, a crocodile or a shark, he was so good with animals, nothing was going to get him,” he said. “We thought he was going to live forever, but it would always be a crazy silly accident, and as it turns out that’s exactly what it was.”

Justin also said that he had no idea where his footage of the attack went, and that his only hope is that nobody ever sees it.

You can watch the whole interview below: