‘Turn this damn thing off’: Wife recalls fatal moment husband was sucked into MRI machine

6 hours ago 4

Westbury, New York: The widow of a man killed when he was sucked into an MRI machine by his nine-kilogram neck chain says she called out to him to help her off the table after she underwent a scan, and the technician summoned him into the room.

Keith McAllister, 61, died on Thursday, one day after he entered the treatment room at Nassau Open MRI to help his wife, Adrienne Jones-McAllister, off the table after she had undergone an MRI scan on her knee.

Keith McAllister, of New York, who was killed when he was sucked into an MRI machine.

When he entered the room, the machine’s strong magnetic force drew him in by the metallic weight-training chain he was wearing around his neck, according to a release from the Nassau County Police Department.

Jones-McAllister told local television outlet News 12 Long Island her husband’s chain had prompted a casual conversation during a previous visit to the facility, with comments like: “Ooooooh, that’s a big chain!”

She said as her husband got close to her in the room “the machine switched him around, pulled him in and he hit the MRI”.

“I said: ‘Could you turn off the machine, call 911, do something, turn this damn thing off!’” she recalled, as tears ran down her face. “He went limp in my arms.”

She said the technician helped her try to pull her husband off the machine, but it was impossible.

“He waved goodbye to me and then his whole body went limp.”

A GoFundMe page set up to raise money for funeral expenses said McAllister was stuck to the machine for almost an hour.

MRI machines “employ a strong magnetic field” that “exerts very powerful forces on objects of iron, some steels, and other magnetisable objects,” according to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, which says the units are “strong enough to fling a wheelchair across the room”.

Keith McAllister was wearing a nine-kilogram chain when he was sucked into the machine.

Jones-McAllister said her husband suffered heart attacks after he was freed from the MRI machine. He was in a critical condition before his death.

A person who answered the phone at Nassau Open MRI on Long Island declined to comment on Friday.

McAllister’s death was not the first in New York to result from an MRI machine.

In 2001, six-year-old Michael Colombini was killed at the Westchester Medical Centre when an oxygen tank flew into the chamber, drawn in by the MRI’s 10-tonne electromagnet. In 2010, records filed in Westchester County revealed that the family settled a lawsuit for $US2.9 million ($4.4 million).

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