Steve Irwin’s Cameraman Reveals Crocodile Hunter’s Last Words Before Dying

Justin Lyons, the cameraman who was right there with Steve Irwin when he died is finally revealing details of the Crocodile Hunter’s final moments.

Lyons appeared on an Australian morning show Sunday and talked about the tragic accident that happened back in 2006.

“It was shocking. 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. 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.”

The two animal lovers were filming off the coast of Australia when the incident occurred. They were trying to get a final shot of the huge stingray swimming away.

“All of a sudden it propped on its front and started stabbing wildly with its tail, hundreds of strikes in a few seconds. 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.”

There were reports going around that the stingray’s barb came out during the attack, but Lyons denied those reports. “It didn’t come out. Steve didn’t pull it out. It went through his chest like a hot knife through butter.”

Sadly, there was no chance of saving Irwin. The damage the attack did to his heart was massive. Lyons knew the odds weren’t in his favor, but he tried to perform CPR on his friend for over an hour.

“I was 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.”

Like Lyons said, you knew it was going to be something weird with Steve. At least you can’t look back at his life and say he didn’t have a good time. He experienced so many amazing things, you know? Things that us normal people could only dream of experiencing.