Attentive neighbor rescues South Whidbey man squashed by stone

Published 2:34 pm Tuesday, September 23, 2014

A Clinton man considers himself lucky to be alive after being crushed by 400-pound granite slab.

Jim Grilliot’s neighbor Matt Kukuk heard his cries for help and ran over to the Hilltop Drive home on Sunday, Sept. 14. That’s where Kukuk found Grilliot, 62, trapped between the granite slab and a half wine barrel planter. He was able to lift it enough for Grilliot to crawl out. The man had been pinned for about 5 minutes.

“We just heard this crashing sound and a yell,” said Kukuk, of he and wife Megan, who both happened to be working around the house that day. “It sounded like trouble, followed by the yell ‘Help!’”

“It was all I could do to lift it,” he added. “When I went to push on it, I only lifted it a couple of feet.”

The slab was tilted against an exterior wall. Grilliot said he kept the granite piece because he had plans to eventually use it in his home of more than two years.

Grilliot was taken by ambulance to Whidbey General Hospital and treated for fractured ribs, a punctured lung and a broken bone in his spine.

The Boeing employee spent the next three days in the hospital for observation. He returned to the hospital last Wednesday for a checkup and believes he is on the mend with no complications, though he added that fractured ribs hurt “quite a bit.” He hoped to return to work this week and had invited the Kukuks over for dinner this coming weekend.

“I’m convinced that had he not been there, I could very well have died,” Grilliot said.

“I want to recognize the heroic deeds of Matt and his wife Megan,” he added. “They were right there.”

Matt Kukuk deflected the praise and use of the word hero, saying he was just being neighborly and that anyone would have done the same.

“I just ran up and helped my neighbor,” Kukuk said.

The emergency encounter was the first time Grilliot and Kukuk met.

“What a way to get introduced to my neighbor,” Grilliot said.