Steve Irwin
© Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesSteve Irwin realised that the stingray's barb had punctured his lung but not his heart, Justin Lyons told Australia's Network Ten television.
Cameraman tells of moment Australian naturalist's chest was repeatedly pierced by barb, and his last words - 'I'm dying'

The only person to witness the moment Steve Irwin was pierced in the chest by a stingray barb said the injuries were so severe that the Australian TV naturalist could not possibly have been saved.

Justin Lyons, a regular underwater cameraman for Irwin and a close friend, said the jagged barb punctured Irwin's chest dozens of times, causing a massive injury to his heart. "He obviously didn't know it had punctured his heart but he knew it had punctured his lung," Lyons told Australia's Network Ten television.

"He was having trouble breathing. Even if we'd been able to get him into an emergency ward at that moment we probably wouldn't have been able to save him, because the damage to his heart was massive. As we're motoring back I'm screaming at one of the other crew in the boat to put their hand over the wound and we're saying to him things like, 'Think of your kids, Steve, hang on, hang on, hang on.' He just sort of calmly looked up at me and said, 'I'm dying.' And that was the last thing he said."

Irwin and Lyons were just over a week into filming a series called Ocean's Deadliest on the Great Barrier Reef in September 2006 when they took an inflatable boat a short distance from the main vessel carrying the rest of the crew in the hope of finding a tiger shark, Lyons said. Instead they came across a 2.4-metre-wide stingray, and entered chest-deep water to film it. Stingrays are usually calm and will just swim away if frightened, he said.

The final shot was to be of Irwin swimming up to the stingray, with Lyons then filming it swim away. "I had the camera on. I thought - this is going to be a great shot, fantastic. All of a sudden it propped on its front and started stabbing wildly with its tail, hundreds of strikes in a few seconds," said Lyons.

He assumes the animal mistook Irwin's shadow for a tiger shark, its main prey. Lyons said he initially did not realise his friend was hurt: "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 and Steve was standing in a huge pool of blood that I realised something had gone wrong."

While Irwin was in "extraordinary pain" from the venom on the barb, Lyons said, the naturalist believed he had only punctured a lung. It was only when Lyons helped put Irwin on the inflatable boat he realised the extent of the damage. "It's a jagged, sharp barb and it went through his chest like a hot knife through butter."

Lyons added: "He had a two-inch wide injury over his heart, with blood and fluid coming out of it."

Irwin was returned to the main boat and Lyons tried to revive him: "We hoped for a miracle. I did CPR on him for over an hour before the medics came, but pronounced him dead within 10 seconds of looking at him."

Another cameraman filmed attempts to save him, following Irwin's strict orders that anything that happened to him during filming should be recorded. Lyons said he did not know what had happened to the footage, and did not think it should ever be shown in any form: "Never. Out of respect for his family, I would say never."