Duane Chapman Breaks Down Over Wife Beth Days Before Her Death: 'I Wasn't Going to Let Her Die'
Duane “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman is reliving the worst day of his life.
In an exclusive clip of next week’s finale of Dog’s Mot Wanted, viewers can see the the raw and emotional moments the Chapman family share with each other the days before and the hours after Beth’s passing.
In an emotional home footage clip, Duane’s daughters — Lyssa, Bonnie and Cecily — are at a loss for words hours after their mom dies.
“It feels like it’s not real,” says Lyssa, who’s one of Duane’s children with his third wife, Lyssa Brittain.
“We’ve prepared for this for a while,” Duane, 66, told her. “I don’t care how much you prepare, it’s tough.”
Talking in front of the camera this time, Duane says, “It’s about 6 a.m. in Hawaii, Honolulu. At 5:30 something, Beth usually gets up every day to hit Koko Head mountain here with the family, some of her girls and her dog, and today at that time Beth’s hike was the stairway to heaven.”
The clip, then, flashes back five days earlier — where things quickly began to go downhill for Beth and the family.
“We were flying from Colorado and [Beth] started feeling not so good,” Duane, who’s standing outside of his home, says to the camera. “She took a steroid pill that they gave her and her breathing got really raspy and really bad. I had to follow her around. If I couldn’t hear her breathing I was like ‘Where is she?’ She was sitting down in the bathroom and all of the sudden she stood up and said, ‘I can’t breathe.'”
“She put her hands against the wall and started bouncing trying to get air,” he adds. “She want straight back, I saw her eyes roll back in her head and she fell into my arms. All I kept thinking was, ‘I have to breathe the breath of life back in her because I told her I wasn’t going to let her die.’ And so she didn’t, she took a big suction of air and I was like, ‘Cecilly, call 911 right now.'”
“I just hear my dad yell, ‘Everybody get out of the house. Cecily, get here right now,'” an emotional Cecily says. “You kind of just know.”
Beth, who was diagnosed with stage II throat cancer in September 2017, died on June 26 at the age of 51.
RELATED VIDEO: Duane ‘Dog’ Chapman Reveals ‘Dog’s Most Wanted’ Won’t Be the Same Without Beth
Duane announced the news in a heartbreaking tweet. “It’s 5:32 in Hawaii, this is the time she would wake up to go hike Koko Head mountain,” he wrote. “Only today, she hiked the stairway to heaven. We all love you, Beth. See you on the other side.”
At the time, a rep for the Chapmans told PEOPLE, “Beth died at 5:32 this morning, the same time she would wake up to go hiking Koko Head. The exact same time. She was surrounded by family and Dog was there, holding her hand.”
The family honored Beth at a gathering with friends and fans at Fort DeRussy Beach in Waikiki, Hawaii, as well as at an emotional memorial service at the Heritage Christian Center in Aurora, Colorado.
The finale of Dog’s Most Wanted airs Wednesday, Nov. 6 at 9 p.m. EST on WGN.
