LUCKY ESCAPE

Woman Impaled By Stingray Barb: ‘Certain I Was Going to Die’

Kristie O'Brien said she thought about ‘The Crocodile Hunter’ Steve Irwin, who was killed by a stingray in 2006, when she was impaled by a stingray barb this week.

A Florida woman said she thought about ‘The Crocodile Hunter’ Steve Irwin when she was impaled by a stingray in Raskin, south of Tampa on Tuesday. “I was trying to stay as calm as I could,” Kristie O’Brien told FOX 13 this week of the moment at Bahia Beach when she was injured. “But I was certain that I was going to die because, I mean, like everyone has like this picture of Steve Irwin when he literally was punctured in his chest.” Irwin died in 2006 when he was stabbed in the heart by a stingray barb while swimming at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. O’Brien, who remains in hospital, was stabbed four inches deep in the back by the stingray, narrowly missing her lungs. When paramedics arrived they cut the stingray at the base of its tail with the barb being removed when O’Brien arrived at hospital. She says she will go back in the water again but probably not in the same spot.