CROCODILE KID CHEATS DEATH!
Hungry monster chases Irwin’s son
JUST 15 years after TV Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin was killed filming a dangerous wild critter, his 18-year-old son, Robert, narrowly cheated death from a monstrous razortoothed reptile.
Frightening footage caught young Robert literally running for his life after a hungry 13-foot crocodile went after him at the Irwin family’s Australia Zoo.
Robert was “testing” to see if Casper, a rare light-skinned saltwater croc, was mellow enough in his new enclosure to appear in public shows.
But instead of taking a food offering from Robert’s hand, Casper went rogue and charged the teen, who took off like a bat out of hell!
A video caught stunned
Robert bellowing “bail! bail! bail!” as he dashed away from the snapping jaws of the rampaging 770pound beast.
Saltwater crocs can run from 15 to 18 miles per hour — much faster than the 8 mph of an average man and almost as quick as the 20 mph of an Olympic sprinter — so the daredevil teen certainly cheated death, unlike his tragic dad, Steve, the world-famous wild animal wrangler.
As GLOBE reported, Robert’s 44-year-old father was trailing an eight-foot stingray off Australia’s Great Barrier Reef when the massive creature got spooked and fatally speared him in the heart with its pointed tail on Sept. 4, 2006.
“All of a sudden, it propped on its front and started stabbing wildly with its tail, hundreds of strikes in a few seconds,” Irwin’s cameraman Justin Lyons remembers. “It probably thought Steve’s shadow was a tiger shark, which feeds on them pretty regularly.”
The badly bleeding Irwin was rushed by boat for medical help, but couldn’t be saved.
Since then, his widow, Terri, 57, daughter, Bindi, 23, and Robert have been carrying on his wildlife legacy at Australia Zoo.