*A routine knee scan at Nassau Open MRI in Westbury, Long Island, turned fatal when Keith McAllister, 61, was pulled into the MRI machine by the force of its magnetic field.
As The Independent reports, his wife, Adrienne Jones-McAllister, was nearing the end of her MRI when she asked a technician to bring her husband in to help her stand. Moments later, the powerful magnet inside the machine grabbed onto McAllister’s 20-pound weight-training chain, dragging him toward the equipment.
“I was saying ‘turn off the machine, call 911, do something, turn this damn thing off!’” Jones-McAllister told News 12 Long Island. She and the technician tried desperately to pull him away. “He waved goodbye to me and his whole body went limp,” she recalled.
McAllister died the following day after suffering multiple heart attacks. Nassau County Police initially described the cause as a “medical episode.”
But family members dispute that explanation, citing the machine’s powerful magnetic pull as the direct cause.
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Samantha Bodden, McAllister’s stepdaughter, created a GoFundMe page to help with funeral expenses. She wrote that her mother and the technician fought for several minutes to release him before help arrived.
“He was attached to the machine for almost an hour,” she added.
Addressing speculation that McAllister shouldn’t have been in the room, Bodden clarified: “Was it a freak accident – yes. However, him being in that room wasn’t unauthorized.”
MRI scanners generate powerful magnetic fields that can forcefully pull metal objects. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering notes that these fields are so strong that they could propel a wheelchair across a room.
“Even after the machine is cut off for emergencies the magnet still holds a great force of power,” Bodden wrote. “So yes, it was strong enough to suck him in… He definitely didn’t deserve to go out like that.”
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