Man dies after being pulled into MRI machine

A man who entered an MRI suite while wearing a 20-lb weight training metal chain around his neck has died.

Keith McAllister, 61, entered the room at Nassau Open MRI in Long Island, NY, where his wife was undergoing an MRI exam on July 17. He was drawn by the magnet's force into the machine, according to a report published July 19 by Associated Press (AP), and although he was taken to a local hospital, he died on the same day.

McAllister's wife, Adrienne Jones-McAllister, was getting the exam to image her knee and asked the technician to call her husband once it was over to help her off the table, according to AP. The technician did so.

In an interview with News 12 Long Island, Jones-McAllister said that when her husband got close to her, "at that instant, the machine switched him around, pulled him in and he hit the MRI," AP reported.