Joe Harker
The family of a man who was tragically killed by an MRI machine have claimed that he was trapped for around an hour.
On 16 July, 61-year-old Keith McAllister entered a room on Nassau Open MRI, New York, where an MRI machine was operating while wearing a heavy metal necklace that resulted in him being 'drawn into the machine'.
He had been there because his wife Adrienne Jones-McAllister had been in the machine getting her knee scanned, with her saying she'd asked if her husband could enter the room to help her up once the scan was finished.
Adrienne claimed he was let into the room by a technician, despite wearing a large metallic chain around his neck, and she said she saw the machine 'snatch him'.
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This resulted in him suffering what has been described as a 'medical episode' after which he was rushed to hospital, but he sadly died the following day (17 July).
An investigation has since been launched.
In a GoFundMe set up to raise money for Keith's funeral, which you can donate to here, Adrienne's daughter Samantha Bodden claimed that a technician at Nassau Open MRI 'forgot to inform' the 61-year-old to take off the metal chain.
She also says that Keith was 'attached to the machine for almost an hour' before they got him away from it, and explained that her mother's husband had suffered 'several heart attacks' as a result.
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The family refutes the claim that Keith wasn't allowed to be in the room, alleging that the technician brought him in.
Adrienne told News 12 Long Island: "In that instant, the machine switched him around, pulled him in, and he hit the MRI. I was saying, ‘Could you turn off the machine? Call 911. Do something. Turn this damn thing off!’"
MRI machines are incredibly useful scanning tools to get a clearer picture of the human body and what might be troubling it, but they are also very powerful magnets which pose a serious threat to life if proper protocols aren't followed.
An MRI scanner's magnetic force can pull in metal objects and keep them to the point that human strength isn't able to get them back.
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Others have died due to the magnetic power of an MRI scanner in the past, with a six-year-old being killed in 2001 after a metal oxygen tank was pulled across a room.
A Brazilian man suffered a particularly horrific death after he accompanied his mother to a hospital appointment and had a loaded gun on him, the MRI scanner pulled the gun from the man's waistband and the weapon discharged into his stomach.
LADbible has contacted Nassau Open MRI for comment.