AP A stingray swims in its enclosure at the Sydney Aquarium Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006. Australian international media personality and environmentalist Steve Irwin also known as the Crocodile Hunter was killed by a stingray barb to the heart while filming a television series on the Great Barrier Reef on Monday, Sept. 4.

The "Crocodile Hunter" pulled the poisonous stingray barb from his chest in his last act before dying, his longtime manager said Tuesday.

"It shows that Steve came over the top of the ray and the tail came up, and spiked him here (in the chest), and he pulled it out, and the next minute he's gone," Stainton told reporters in Cairns, the nearest city to tiny Batt Reef off Australia's far northeast coast where the accident happened.

Stainton said the video was "shocking."

"It's a very hard thing to watch, because you are actually witnessing somebody die, and it's terrible," he said.

The tape was not released to the public. Queensland state police took possession of a copy for a coroner's investigation.

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TUESDAY MOURNING:

Irwin's body was returned home to Beerwah, a hamlet in southeastern Queensland on the fringe of the Outback where he lived with his wife and two young children.

Hundreds placed bouquets and handwritten notes at an ad hoc shrine to the popular 44-year-old naturalist outside the park, and other tributes flowed in from Canberra to Hollywood.

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