Well, this is one in a million accident since sting rays are defense creatures. Sting rays will shake their wings until they are hidden in the sand.

Steve apparently was swimming too close to the bottom and the sting ray felt threatened and shot his barb into his heart. It had both a hole
in his heart since Steve reacted and pulled out the mulitbarbed stinger plus the venom which they do not have a cure for.


He grew up in this environment and just wanted to show people his backyard and he had a good time doing it.

He was not doing anything dangerous as this was supposed to be shown on a TV show that his daughter was going to be in kids show.

Did it catch up to him, no, not based on what he was doing at the time. I have many times went wadding in sting ray invested water fishing for flounder.

I typically shuffle my feet and the stingrays swim away.