The family of a Long Island man who died after being sucked into an MRI machine by his chain necklace has hired a lawyer, who called his death “preventable.”
Keith McAllister died last week at age 61, a day after he entered his wife’s exam room while wearing a 20-pound weight-training chain around his neck. His wife, Adrienne Jones-McAllister, was finishing up a knee scan and had called for him to come help her get up off the table, she said. The tech on duty had allegedly brought him in.
Once in the room, the powerful magnet within the MRI yanked McAllister into the machine, trapping him there. Frantic efforts by Jones-McAllister and the MRI tech to pry him out were unsuccessful, and he was stuck for more than an hour, his stepdaughter later said.
“He waved goodbye to me, and then his whole body went limp,” Jones-McAllister tearfully told an interviewer.
McAllister was rushed to a hospital in critical condition, and his wife said he suffered several heart attacks. Now his family is “devastated and seeking answers,” lawyer Michael Lauterborn said in a statement obtained by People.
Part of the police investigation entails learning how McAllister was allowed into the room, given strict access regulations and safety protocols around the massive magnets. Patients must remove all metal and electronic objects before entering an MRI room.
The facility, Nassau Open MRI in Westbury, told Newsday that McAllister wasn’t a patient there, and police said they’d been told his entry was “unauthorized.” But McAllister’s stepdaughter said he had been brought into the room by a technician who forgot to have McAllister remove the chain.
Lauterborn said his firm, Smith, Cheung & Lauterborn PC of New York City, is “committed to ensuring all facts surrounding this incident are thoroughly investigated by the Nassau County Police Department and the New York State Department of Health.”
The last full week of July is MRI Safety Week. It was started in 2001 after 6-year-old Michael Colombini was killed when an oxygen tank was accidentally brought into the room where he was being scanned. The tank was pulled through the air by the MRI machine, fatally fracturing the young boy’s skull.
With News Wire Services
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