CP Entertainment News
'Crocodile Hunter's' widow doesn't want footage of deadly attack shown
Terri Irwin, wife of Australian environmentalist and television personality Steve Irwin, with son Bob, attends a memorial service for her husband at Australia Zoo in Beerwah, Australia, Wednesday, Sept. 20.
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."'
~Jesse~
