'Crocodile Hunter' Stever Irwin Killed

from the Sunday Morning Herald (Australia)

Television personality and environmentalist Steve Irwin has died from a stingray wound while filming off north Queensland. Friends believe he may have died instantly when struck by a stingray as he filmed a sequence for his eight-year-old daughter Bindi's new TV series.

During the filming Irwin came over the top of a stingray and the stingray's barb went into his chest and put a hole into his heart.

Irwin's death was one of only a handful of known stingray deaths in Australian waters. The Discovery and Animal Planet TV networks - which produced Irwin's programs - suspended broadcasts of the Crocodile Hunter series across its networks this afternoon. Footage of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin being fatally attacked by a stingray on the Great Barrier Reef has been handed to Queensland police.