A Long Island man died after being pulled into an MRI machine by the weight-training chain around his neck in a rare and violent incident at a medical facility in Westbury, police said.
The 61-year-old victim, identified by his wife as Keith McAllister, was drawn into the machine Wednesday afternoon by its powerful magnetic force. He died the following day after suffering multiple heart attacks, according to a recorded interview his wife gave to local news.
Adrienne Jones-McAllister said she was undergoing a knee scan at Nassau Open MRI and had asked the technician to call in her husband for assistance. She said she watched helplessly as the 20-pound chain he wore for exercise was suddenly yanked by the magnet, pulling him violently into the machine.
“At that instant, the machine switched him around, pulled him in and he hit the MRI,” she recalled, crying. “He waved goodbye to me and then his whole body went limp.”
She said the technician tried to help her pull him free, but the force of the magnet made it impossible. Once he was removed, she said, he suffered a series of heart attacks.
The Nassau County Police Department confirmed the fatal incident and said the man died Thursday. His name had not been officially released as of Saturday, pending family authorization.
A person who answered the phone at Nassau Open MRI declined to comment on the incident. Follow-up calls to the facility went unanswered.
MRI machines use powerful magnetic fields to generate detailed images of internal organs and tissues. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering warns that they can exert enough force to “fling a wheelchair across the room” if metal objects are present.
This is not the first fatal MRI incident in New York. In 2001, a 6-year-old boy was killed at Westchester Medical Center when an oxygen tank was pulled into an MRI chamber. That family later settled a lawsuit for $2.9 million.
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