The family of a man who was fatally sucked into an MRI machine while his wife was receiving treatment has described how the tragic incident unfolded.
Adrienne Jones-McAllister was undergoing a routine knee scan when she asked a technician at Nassau Open MRI in Westbury, Long Island, to fetch her husband from the waiting area.
Keith McAllister, 61, entered the examination room to help his wife get back to her feet near the end of the scan. But instead, the machine’s strong magnetic pull dragged McAllister’s 20-pound weight-training chain in.
Jones-McAllister said that she and a technician tried to pry McAllister away from the machine while she pleaded for someone to turn it off.
“I was saying ‘turn off the machine, call 911, do something, turn this damn thing off!” Jones-McAllister told News 12 Long Island. “He waved goodbye to me and his whole body went limp.”
Jones-McAllister said that her husband died the day after the incident last Wednesday after suffering from a series of heart attacks, with the Nassau County Police Department earlier reporting that the man experienced a “medical episode.”
“I haven’t been able to sleep, I’m barely eating. I just can’t believe...,” she said. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around the whole thing.”
McAllister’s stepdaughter Samantha Bodden has set up a GoFundMe campaign page to help the family cover funeral costs.
In the description of the fundraiser, which had raised more than $3,300 by Monday morning, Bodden said her mother and the technician “tried for several minutes to release him” before calling the authorities.
McAllister was attached to the machine for almost an hour before they could release the chain from the machine, she added.
Bodden insisted that, despite some reports, her stepfather was allowed to be in the room.
“Was it a freak accident - yes. However him being in that room wasn’t unauthorized,” she said in a Facebook post a day after McAllister’s death.
MRI machines are designed to find ailments in the body using powerful magnets.
The magnetic field of an MRI scanner extends beyond the machine and exerts powerful forces on iron, some steels, and other magnetizable objects. It is even strong enough to fling a wheelchair across the room, according to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
In a post on Saturday, Bodden attempted to clear up why the hospital didn’t “just shut the machine off.”
“A MRI machine is a magnet. An extremely powerful magnet,” she began. “Even after the machine is cut off for emergencies the magnet still holds a great force of power.”
“So yes, it was strong enough to suck him in which it did and left him that way for a very very long time. He definitely didn’t deserve to go out like that [so much f***ing hate].”
The Independent has contacted Nassau Open MRI for comment.
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