Wife Recalls Watching Machine ‘Snatch Him’

Keith McAllister’s wife was by his side when he was fatally injured in a freak MRI accident.

In an emotional new interview with News 12 Long Island, Adrienne Jones-McAllister tearfully recalled the moment she “saw the machine snatch him” and “pull him” in by a necklace he was wearing.

“He went limp in my arms,” Jones-McAllister said of her late husband, “and this is still pulsating in my brain.”

Police responded to a 911 call at Nassau Open MRI in Westbury, N.Y., just after 4:30 p.m. local time on July 16, when they learned a 61-year-old man (later identified as McAllister) had experienced a “medical episode” after he was caught in one of the machines, the Nassau County Police Department (NCPD) previously said in a news release.

In an update shared two days later, police said the man had “succumbed to his injuries and was declared deceased by a hospital physician.” He suffered several heart attacks following the incident, Jones-McAllister told News 12 Long Island.

Recalling the incident that led to his death, the grieving wife said that after an MRI on her knee, she asked the technician to retrieve her husband to help her get up. She said he was let into the room, despite the fact that he was wearing a 20-lb. chain on his neck.

“In that instant, the machine switched him around, pulled him in, and he hit the MRI,” she told News 12 Long Island of the tragedy.

Both Jones-McAllister and the technician tried to pull her husband off of the machine, to no avail. Through tears, she recalled: “I was saying, ‘Could you turn off the machine? Call 911. Do something. Turn this damn thing off!’ ”

Patients are typically asked to remove any metal and electrical objects from their person before undergoing an MRI. According to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, MRI machines use powerful magnets to scan bodies for diseases and ailments while producing images of “non-bony parts or soft tissues.”

Jones-McAllister told News 12 Long Island that the July 16 visit was not her and her husband’s first time at Nassau Open MRI or the first time that the employee had seen McAllister’s chain, which he used for weight training purposes. In fact, she claimed, “They had a conversation about it before: ‘Oh that’s a big chain.’ ”

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In the days since losing her husband, Jones-McAllister told News 12 Long Island she has been struggling.

“I haven’t been able to sleep, I’m barely eating, I just can’t believe [it],” she said before pausing to wipe tears from her eyes. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing. He waved goodbye to me, and his whole body went limp.”

Jones-McAllister’s late husband, she added to the outlet, was hard-working, “and I loved him so much.”

An investigation into the July 16 incident is ongoing, according to the NCPD.