US man dies after being yanked into MRI machine while wife was getting scan
Keith McAllister entered the room to help his spouse off the table and got pulled in by a heavy necklace he wore for weight training
A man who was pulled into an MRI machine in New York after he walked into the room wearing a large chain necklace has died, according to police and his wife, who told a local television outlet that he waved goodbye before his body went limp.
The man, 61, had entered an MRI room while a scan was under way on Wednesday afternoon at Nassau Open MRI. The machine’s strong magnetic force drew him in by his metallic necklace, according to a release from the Nassau County Police Department.
He died on Thursday afternoon, but a police officer who answered the phone at the Nassau County police precinct where the MRI facility is located said the department had not been given permission to release the name on Saturday.
Adrienne Jones-McAllister told News 12 Long Island in a recorded interview that she was undergoing an MRI on her knee when she asked the technician to get her husband, Keith McAllister, to help her get off the table.
She said she called out to him.
She told News 12 that when the technician summoned her husband into the room, he was wearing a 9kg (20-pound) chain that he uses for weight training, an object they had had a casual conversation about during a previous visit with comments like: “Ooooooh, that’s a big chain!”