MRI Incident Claims Life in New York
WESTBURY, N.Y. — A man tragically lost his life after being pulled by an MRI machine at a facility in New York. He had entered the room wearing a large weight training chain around his neck, and according to his wife and police, he said his goodbyes before taking a step inside.
The incident occurred on Wednesday afternoon while a scan was in process at the Nassau Open MRI. The Nassau County Police Department indicated that the machine’s powerful magnetic force attracted the metal chain, pulling him closer.
The 61-year-old man, whose identity has not yet been released, passed away the following afternoon. An officer from the Nassau County Police District mentioned that he has not received clearance to disclose the man’s name as of Saturday.
Adrienne Jones-McAllister shared her experience during a recorded interview with News 12 Long Island. She was undergoing an MRI herself when she noticed her husband, Keith McAllister, needed assistance getting off the table. Jones-McAllister recounted calling out to him.
She described the moment: “I thought, wow, that’s a heavy chain!” adding that it was indeed a 20-pound weight used for training. As he approached her, it was sudden—the machine activated, and he was pulled in.
Jones-McAllister remembered yelling to the technician, urging them to turn off the machine and to call for help. “He stepped right into my arm,” she recalled, and despite her attempts to assist, separating him from the machine was impossible.
In her words, “He said goodbye to me, and then his whole body just went limp.” After the incident, she reported that he suffered a heart attack once he was released from the MRI.
The Nassau Open MRI did not respond to inquiries on Friday, and their phone line was silent on Saturday. This incident is not the first of its kind; there have been past fatalities linked to MRI machines in New York.
In a similar case in 2001, a six-year-old named Michael Colombini tragically died at Westchester Medical Center when an oxygen tank was pulled into the MRI chamber due to the electromagnet’s force. Legal records later showed that his family received a settlement of $2.9 million in 2010.
The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering notes that MRI machines generate strong magnetic fields that exert formidable forces on metals and magnetizable objects.
