Man who died in freak MRI accident was jammed in machine for almost and hour, never told to remove 20-pound chain: family

The Long Island man killed in a freak MRI accident while wearing a massive 20-pound chain was led into the machine room by a forgetful technician and wound up attached to the machine for an hour before he could be released, his family claimed.

Keith McAllister, 61, was fatally injured in the bizarre incident, which unfolded Wednesday afternoon inside Nassau Open MRI in Westbury while his wife, Adrienne Jones-McAllister, was at the center to have an image of her knee taken.

“While my mother was laying on the table, the technician left the room to get her husband to help her off the table. He forgot to inform him to take the chain he was wearing from around his neck off when the magnet sucked him in,” daughter of Jones-McAllister, Samantha Bodden, wrote in a GoFundMe for burial costs.

“My mother and the tech tried for several minutes to release him before the police were called,” she wrote.

“He was attached to the machine for almost an hour before they could release the chain from the machine.”

Bodden added that McAllister was led into the room by an MRI technician who did not inform him to take off his chain.

“Several news stations are saying he wasn’t authorized to be in the room when in fact he was because the technician went and brought him into the room,” the statement said.

The strong magnetic field created by an MRI machine can cause metal objects to be pulled in with force.

They can also heat up metal objects, potentially burning a patient.

Jones-McAllister said her husband suffered several heart attacks as a result of the incident, which ultimately led to his death.