Cameraman Justin Lyons has spoken out about the final moments of Steve Irwin, revealing the conservationist’s last two words after a fatal stingray attack off Australia’s coast.
Lyons, who was filming with Irwin, 44, on September 4, 2006, at Batt Reef, disclosed the detail in the new documentary *Steve Irwin: A Wild Life*, which marks the 20th anniversary of the television personality’s death. The longtime crew member had worked with the “Crocodile Hunter” star countless times before that day, including on roughly a hundred prior stingray shoots.
“We zipped around [in a boat] for 10-15 minutes before we found the stingray. And then, it was like, okay, game on,” Lyons recalled in the documentary.
“I mean, we’d only filmed with stingrays a hundred times before. They were awesome to film with,” he continued, before describing how the bull ray appeared calm until Irwin approached. The animal mistook him for a tiger shark and began striking defensively.
“The water just boiled. I couldn’t see anything that was going on. Bubbles and thrashing,” Lyons emotionally recounted. Irwin surfaced and told him the barb had punctured his lung. Lyons pulled him onto the boat, where the crew performed CPR for 45 minutes while racing toward land.
“He’s conscious, and he says to me, looks me right in the eye, and he says, ‘I’m dying,'” Lyons shared, identifying those as Irwin’s final words.
Helicopters and paramedics were waiting when the boat reached shore, but Irwin was declared dead within 10 seconds of their arrival. Lyons was left shattered by the sudden loss.
“I remembered thinking my whole world’s just changed, just like that and it was never the same,” he said.
Irwin’s death sent shockwaves through the global entertainment and conservation communities, cutting short a career built on close encounters with dangerous wildlife. The father of two had married Terri Irwin in 1992, and together they had built Australia Zoo into an internationally recognized wildlife institution while raising their children, Bindi and Robert.
Terri Irwin has remained unmarried in the nearly two decades since her husband’s death, a choice she addressed in a 2024 interview with *the outlet*.
“I totally got my happily ever after,” she told the outlet. “And while there are a lot of wonderful men in the world, can you see another Steve Irwin? I just can’t. I’d be like, ‘I love that you’re a librarian and the Dewey Decimal System is cool, but I got to go jump a crocodile and do that.’ Forget that.”
She described their 14-year marriage as “the best marriage in the whole world” and said she had become comfortable with solitude.
“So I’m okay to be on my own now. And I’m lonely for Steve, but I’m not a lonely person, so I’m very lucky,” she said, adding that her husband would be “so proud” of what their family had accomplished since his death.
Bindi Irwin, now an adult with a family of her own, has also spoken about her father’s legacy in the lead-up to the anniversary, continuing the conservation work that defined his public life.
The documentary featuring Lyons’ account arrives as audiences revisit the circumstances of Irwin’s death, which occurred during production of the documentary series *Ocean’s Deadliest*. The stingray encounter was unprovoked by human standards but defensive from the animal’s perspective, a distinction that has informed ongoing discussions about wildlife filming protocols in the years since.