61-Year-Old Man Dies in Tragic MRI Accident While Assisting Wife
A 61-year-old man, Keith McAllister, tragically died after being pulled into an MRI machine at a Long Island imaging center while assisting his wife. The incident occurred on July 16, 2025, at Nassau Open MRI, where his wife, Adrienne, had just completed a scan. McAllister was wearing a heavy metal chain, which became a fatal hazard due to the MRI’s strong magnetic field.
According to Adrienne, her husband had been called into the room by a technician to help her off the table. Moments after entering, the chain around his neck was forcefully attracted to the machine. McAllister suffered multiple heart attacks during the ordeal and passed away the following day while receiving medical care.
Adrienne and the technician struggled to free him but were unsuccessful until emergency responders arrived nearly an hour later. The family is now coping with the trauma and seeking answers. Adrienne described the experience as deeply painful, saying she’s been unable to sleep or eat since.
Their daughter, Samantha Bodden, has addressed public confusion about the event and launched a GoFundMe to help with funeral costs. As the family grieves, they also face a wave of viral attention and online speculation. Our deepest condolences go out to them during this heartbreaking time.
Man dies after weight-training chain around neck pulls him into MRI machine
Keith McAllister had approached machine after wife called for help, and was sucked in by device’s magnetic force
A man who wore a large weight-training chain around his neck and approached his wife while a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine scanned her knee at a clinic in New York died after the device forcefully pulled him, according to police and media reports.
Keith McAllister, 61, was killed at the Nassau Open MRI clinic in Westbury, Long Island, after he accompanied his wife, Adrienne Jones-McAllister, there on 16 July.
Adrienne told the local outlet News 12 Long Island that an MRI machine there was scanning her knee when she called out to her husband, “Keith, come help me up” from the table. The technician operating the machine – which looks like a long, narrow tube with openings on each end – then allowed Keith to walk in while he wore a nearly 20lb (9kg) metal chain that he used for weight training.
Police in Nassau county, New York, said Keith was then sucked into the device by its potent magnetic force. He endured “a medical episode” at that point which left him in critical condition at a hospital, and he was pronounced dead a day later, police said.
Adrienne told News 12 that her late husband had suffered several heart attacks after the incident with the MRI machine and before his death. She recalled, through tears, “seeing the machine snatch him and pull him into the machine”.
She said she implored for the clinic to call for emergency help and, referring to the machine, to “turn this damn thing off!”
But eventually Keith “went limp in my arms”, Adrienne recounted. “This is still pulsating in my brain.”
A GoFundMe campaign since launched to support Adrienne purported that Keith “was attached to the machine for almost an hour before they could release the chain from the machine”.
Adrienne told News 12 that she and her husband had previously been to Nassau Open MRI, and he had worn his weight-training chain there before.
“This was not the first time that guy [had] seen that chain,” Adrienne said to the station. “They had a conversation about it before.”
A person who picked up a phone call to Nassau Open MRI on Monday said the facility had no comment.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates MRI safety and warns that scans with the technology can create a “strong, static magnetic field” that poses physical hazards. The agency says that “careful screening of people and objects entering the MRI environment is critical to ensure nothing enters the magnet area that may become a projectile” and dangerous to anyone nearby.
The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, meanwhile, cautions that MRI machines exerts “very powerful forces on objects of iron, some steels and other magnetizable objects” and have the strength “to fling a wheelchair across the room”.
McAllister was not the first person killed by an MRI machine in New York. In 2001, Michael Colombini, 6, died when an oxygen tank flew into an MRI chamber that he was in, having been pulled in by the machine at a medical center in Westchester county.
At a dangerous moment for dissent in the United States
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you close this tab, I wanted to ask if you could support the Guardian at this crucial time for journalism.
When the military is deployed to quell overwhelmingly peaceful protest, when elected officials of the opposing party are arrested or handcuffed, when student activists are jailed and deported, and when a wide range of civic institutions – non-profits, law firms, universities, news outlets, the arts, the civil service, scientists – are targeted and penalised by the United States federal government, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that our core freedoms are disappearing before our eyes – and democracy itself is slipping away.
In any country on the cusp of authoritarianism, the role of the press as an engine of scrutiny, truth and accountability becomes increasingly critical. At the Guardian, we see it as our job not only to report on the suppression of dissenting voices, but to make sure those voices are heard.
Not every news organisation sees its mission this way – indeed, some in the US have been pressured by their corporate and billionaire owners to avoid antagonising the government. I am thankful the Guardian is different.
Our only financial obligation is to fund independent journalism in perpetuity: we have no ultrarich owner, no shareholders, no corporate bosses with the power to overrule or influence our editorial decisions. Reader support is what guarantees our survival and safeguards our independence – and every penny we receive is reinvested in our work.
The Guardian’s global perspective helps contextualise and illuminate what we are experiencing in this country. That doesn’t mean we have a single viewpoint, but we do have a shared set of values. Humanity, curiosity and honesty guide us, and our work is rooted in solidarity with ordinary people and hope for our shared future.
It has never been more urgent, or more perilous, to pursue reporting that holds power to account and counters the spread of misinformation – and at the Guardian we make our journalism free and accessible to all. Can you spare just 37 seconds now to support our work and protect the free press? We value whatever you can spare, but a recurring contribution makes the most impact, enabling greater investment in our most crucial, fearless journalism. As our thanks to you, we can offer you some great benefits – including seeing far fewer fundraising messages like this. We’ve made it very quick to set up, so we hope you’ll consider it. Thank you.