Antioch Man Works to Recover from Spinal Cord Injury

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Byline: Lee A. Litas

He never even knew what a quadriplegic was, but for 36-year-old Antioch resident Eric Knutson that knowledge came with a price.

On July 8, 2007, while hosting a party for his wife, Jacqui Barabas, at his childhood home on the Chain-O-Lakes, Knutson dove off a tree swing and into the water effectively breaking his C-4 spinal vertebrae which left him paralyzed and unable to move from the neck down.

"I saw a flash of light and I tried to get up out of the water, but I couldn't move anything but my head. It was pretty scary," recalled Knutson.

Barabas immediately jumped into the water, turned him over and held him until the …