A 61-year-old man died after being pulled into an MRI machine at a facility in New York while wearing a heavy metal chain around his neck, according to statements from his grieving wife.
Kevin McAllister was accompanying his wife, Adrienne Jones-McAllister, during her knee scan appointment at Nassau Open MRI when the tragic incident occurred last Wednesday.
The retired corrections officer was wearing a 20-pound weight-training chain at the time — an accessory he had worn before and joked about with staff on a previous visit.
Adrienne told News 12 that staff had commented on the chain during an earlier scan session, saying things like, “Ooooooh, that’s a big chain!” — but no one had instructed him to remove it before entering the MRI room.
After her scan concluded, Kevin entered the MRI room and approached the machine, unaware of the imminent danger posed by the powerful magnetic field.
“I saw him walk toward the table, and then the machine just snatched him,” Adrienne recalled. “He went limp in my arms – and this is still pulsating in my brain.”
Ms. Jones-McAllister said Kevin waved to her moments before the accident, only for his body to suddenly collapse after being pulled toward the machine.
He was rushed to a nearby hospital, but later died of cardiac arrest, his wife said. Nassau County Police confirmed the sequence of events and added that no criminal activity is suspected.
Medical professionals from nearby hospitals have since raised serious concerns about potential safety protocol breaches, particularly involving metal objects.
Dr. Payal Sud, an emergency medicine physician at North Shore University Hospital, said the situation was highly alarming. “If this was a chain wrapped around the neck, I could imagine any kind of strangulation injuries… cervical spine injuries… blunt force trauma – all of it is possible in an MRI mishap like this,” she told WABC.
The facility has not commented publicly, but an official investigation into the incident is underway.
The tragedy came just days after another workplace accident in Vernon, California, where a 19-year-old worker at Tina’s Burritos died after being pulled into a meat grinder while cleaning it. Despite efforts by co-workers to shut off the industrial processor, the teen could not be saved.
Just two weeks before that, another industrial accident occurred in Missouri, where a 38-year-old employee at a cereal manufacturing plant died after becoming trapped in an industrial oven.
Safety experts have pointed to the string of fatal workplace and industrial accidents as a grim reminder of the dangers posed by machinery — especially when strict safety measures are not observed.
Editing by M10News Crime Desk | Contact: crime@m10news.com
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