at 22:02 on September 26, 2006, EST.

NEW YORK (AP) - "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin's widow says she hasn't seen the film of her husband's deadly encounter with a stingray and that it won't ever be shown on television.

"What purpose would that serve?" Terri Irwin said in an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters scheduled to air on television Wednesday in the United States and Australia.

Irwin, 44, died Sept. 4 when a stringray's barb pierced his chest while he filmed a TV show on the Great Barrier Reef. A memorial service held for him last week was broadcast on three television networks in Australia.

Irwin's friend and business partner, John Stainton, has seen the film. He told Walters he never wants to see it again and doesn't want anyone else to see it, either. "It's just a horrible piece of film tape," he said.

American-born Terri Irwin said she was on a research trip in Australia with the couple's two children - eight-year-old daughter Bindi and two-year-old son Bob - when her brother-in-law reached her with the news.

"I remember thinking, 'Don't say it. Don't say it. Don't say it,"' she said. "I looked out the window, and Bindi was skipping, skipping along outside the window. And I thought, 'Oh, my children. He wouldn't have wanted to leave the children.' And I knew it was an accident. It was an accident so stupid. It was like running with a pencil."

She said it's important for her family to continue the work her husband did in teaching the world about wildlife.

"I've always told Bindi, 'If anything ever happened to me, I will always watch over you from Heaven,"' she said. "But she always understood because living at a zoo, animals die, she's seen death. She knows what death is."

Irwin told Walters she is getting through her grief "one minute at a time."

She said her son Bob recently took a screwdriver out of the drawer and said he was going to fix the family's motorbike.

"Off he goes, very carefully carrying it like it was a lit candle," she said. "Goes up to the motorbike and starts poking at it. I said, 'what are you doing to the motorbike?' He said, 'I'm fixing the motorbike so daddy can drive it from heaven."'


©The Canadian Press, 2006

Good. That footage should not be shown.

too bloody right!

Who wants to see that?!

I thought the same thing about Hammond, that'll all be on film inside the car too...would've been pretty horrific if he hadnt made it

Terri and the children have been so brave through all this

It will be shown, just wait.

It's already available if you look hard enough.

Natisse said:

It was gonna happen There are some strange people in the world

susannah said:

yeah I know hon

"Off he goes, very carefully carrying it like it was a lit candle," she said. "Goes up to the motorbike and starts poking at it. I said, 'what are you doing to the motorbike?' He said, 'I'm fixing the motorbike so daddy can drive it from heaven."'

luv4u said:

Like father, like son.

Justin1972UK said:

Justin... enough

lazycrockett said:

IO agree.

Terry should set up a foundation in Steve's name and make those sick bastards pay to download the movie file.

It will leak somehow, may as well benefit from a tragedy

Great interview with her on Aussie tv tonight.

I can't believe how many sick people there are who would want to see such a thing though!


Put away your pathetic perversions and GET A LIFE!

mrdespues said:

yeah why does she want to talk to the press so soon? I'd want to hide away...

susannah said:

So soon? I think that's kind of relative... she didn't speak at all at the ceremony for Steve at Australia Zoo... "talking" is also relative as she was basically crying through the whole thing, poor girl/woman.... like I said, it was a great interview and it was the first time she'd publicly spoken since his death... and I really felt like I got to know more of what she was about from it even though I felt I did a bit before anyway simply cause she's originally from Eugene, OR where I once lived AND is also an Aussie, like me.

mrdespues said:

Sorry, I thought that was where you were coming from too...

I dunno, I just think it's strange that she would want to talk about it publicly at all...I don't really know them at all, so I dunno, maybe Im way off track, but...

susannah said:

I don't think it's strange, I think it shows strength and it doesn't mean she has stopped grieving at all... it's just a story which has a lot of interest and is close to a lot of peoples' hearts, perhaps in Australia most of all... I think it is admirable and it would be understandable whether she chose to speak "so soon" or not... it doesn't trivialise her grief or anything at all in my opinion... just shows a willingess to reach out to the public who cared/cares so much for that family....

mrdespues said:

Yeah, fair enough

susannah said:

If the family does not want the footage shown, it should not be shown.

With that said, unfortunately it will leak out on the internet (it shounds like it may already have) .

'Crocodile Hunter' believed he would die early, but not from an animal

at 22:41 on September 27, 2006, EST.
By ROHAN SULLIVAN

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Steve Irwin was fearless when it came to the dangerous animals he caged, cajoled and caroused with as television's "Crocodile Hunter." And while he never thought they would get him, he always felt he would die early.

"I thought he would fall out of a tree. He thought it would be a car accident," Irwin's widow, Terri, said in her first interview since the star and conservationist died Sept. 4 in a stingray attack.

In an hour-long television special broadcast nationally on Australia's Nine Network, Terri Irwin painted a picture of her husband as a rough-edged romantic, loving father and hyper-energetic animal lover determined to live his life to the fullest.

More than 2.5 million Australians - one eighth of the entire population - watched the interview, according to ratings figures, making it the one of the most watched programs in the country this year.

Terri Irwin, originally from Eugene, Oregon, told Nine's Ray Martin that she hadn't seen the footage of her husband's final moments, and that the footage would never be publicly aired if she could help it.

"I can't see any purpose for bringing that out," she said.

Irwin, 44, died within minutes of being stabbed in the chest by a stingray's poisonous barb as he swam near the animal while filming on the Great Barrier Reef.

His death prompted an unprecedented outpouring of grief in Australia and among many of the estimated 200 million-plus viewers of his shows, broadcast globally on the Discovery cable network.

A memorial service last week at the family-owned wildlife park where he lived was attended by Prime Minister John Howard, and drew video condolence messages from actors Russell Crowe, Cameron Diaz and others.

The gates of Australia Zoo - the park and operations centre for Irwin's conservation charity work - are festooned with flowers, cards and other tributes placed by visitors at a spontaneous shrine.

Terri Irwin toured the scene for Wednesday's broadcast, and wept. Irwin would have been so amazed at the reaction, she said, that "you would have been able to knock him over with a feather."

She said Irwin's burial place would be kept secret because the couple had an agreement that "he'd lived life so big that he just wanted privacy at that point."

She described the painful moment when, while she was on a trip with the couple's daughter, Bindi, eight, and son, Bob, two, to southern Tasmania state, she contacted Irwin's brother Frank, after receiving an urgent message.

"He said there been a diving accident with Steve," she said. "It really broadsided me when he told me what happened. I am thinking, 'Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it.' And he said it, he said those three words: 'and he died.' And I felt myself explode inside."

Terri Irwin said her husband would have been devastated if anyone thought badly of any animal that had inadvertently harmed him. In the days after his death, a number of stingrays were found dead - their barbed tails chopped off - on the beaches of the northeastern state of Queensland, where the Great Barrier Reef is located.

"It was a complete and total accident," Terri Irwin said. "It was running with scissors, you know? They tell you never run with scissors because this will happen, and it never happens. It was a crazy accident, that's all."

She said Irwin's passion for the Australian Outback and its animals was huge, and that he was conscious of the danger they sometimes posed.

"He had absolutely no fear about his own mortality," she said. "But it absolutely would have levelled him if someone else was sick or injured, or if we lost someone else."

Terri said Irwin "had a very strong conviction that he would" die early, adding, "To the point where I'm grateful in a way, because we're prepared."

But "I never thought it would be an animal. He never thought it would be an animal," she said.


©The Canadian Press, 2006

Just shows you, trust your intincts

I cant wait for the jack hanna dead thread.

I know this is late, but so what.
I feel sorry for the family, but I'm not HARDLY surprised that an animal FINALLY got after his ass. It's not like we didn't know it was an inevitability. So I don't know why the media is acting so damn surprised, really.
Done.

kidelrich said:

that touched me too.