In a haunting reminder of the potential risks hidden in what we often consider to be everyday medical procedures, a woman from New York is sharing her heart-wrenching story about the bizarre MRI accident that claimed the life of her husband, Keith McAllister. With a tremble in her voice, Adrienne Jones-McAllister recounted the unthinkable moment when the MRI machine at Nassau Open MRI in Westbury “snatched” hold of the metal chain around her 61-year-old husband’s neck.
After that, it just wouldn’t release him. “He went limp in my arms,” she wept during an interview with News 12 Long Island. “And this is still pulsating in my brain.”
The incident happened on the 16th of July.
After finishing a knee scan, Adrienne called out to the technician to bring her husband to assist her in getting off the table. He came into the MRI room wearing a heavy, 20-pound chain, which wasn’t a surprise to the staff as they had noticed him with it previously.
“They had a conversation about it before,” Jones-McAllister said.
“Oh that’s a big chain,” they had even pointed out, unknowingly.
In a heart-wrenching turn of events, that oxygen tank chain transformed into a fatal leash in the blink of an eye. Adrienne, her voice trembling as she remembered, told us, “the machine switched him around, pulled him in, and he hit the MRI.” She and the technician desperately tugged at him, trying to set him free as she screamed for the machine to be turned off.
Saturday 19 July 2025: The World Clock — Worldwide https://t.co/JkGHBGNdPo
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HOSPITAL HORRORMan who died after being sucked into MRI machine ‘was brought into room by technician’ before ‘going limp in wife’s armsShe claimed that the technician had previously… pic.twitter.com/8Q1DoxwrFx
— Pierre F. Lherisson (@P_F_Lherisson_) July 19, 2025
But their efforts were in vain.
The tragic news came the next day when the Nassau County Police Department reported that McAllister had endured several heart attacks and sadly passed away due to his injuries.
MRI machines have powerful magnets that can actually pull metal objects from across the room, so you can imagine how strong they are. So, it’s normal, in fact, routine, for patients to get reminded to take off any metal they’ve got on them.
But Keith wasn’t the one getting the MRI; he was just there to support his wife. And because of a bit of oversight in the rules, something terrible happened. Now, they’re looking into it to figure out what went wrong with the usual protocol.
Keith McAllister, of Westbury, NY, was drawn into an MRI by a 20# weight lifting chain around his neck.
Per Ms. McAllister, he had visited the facility previously, while wearing the chain, and yet had never been advised that metal was dangerous, near MRI.
[15-07-2025] pic.twitter.com/n2DqMQSE0e
— Arika 🇺🇸 (@ARIKAHENRY) July 20, 2025
“I haven’t been able to sleep, I’m barely eating, I just can’t believe [it],” Adrienne confessed. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing. He waved goodbye to me, and his whole body went limp.”
Her last words truly reflect the pain and shock she’s feeling. She says he was hard-working, “and I loved him so much.”
The Nassau County Police Department is still trying to figure out what exactly happened. Still, Adrienne Jones-McAllister’s lifelong grief of losing her husband so suddenly is something that’s never going to go away.
