WESTBURY, N.Y. — A man wearing a large chain, and pulled into an MRI machine, has died.

The 61-year-old man was wearing a “large metallic chain” around his neck when he went into a room on July 16 at the Nassau Open MRI in Westbury, New York, The New York Times reported.

He was identified by his wife as Keith McAllister, The Associated Press reported.

Adrienne Jones-McAllister told News 12 Long Island that she was having an MRI on her knee and that she had called for him to help get her off the table.

Jones-McAllister told the news outlet that the technician allowed him to come into the room. Her husband was wearing a 20-pound chain he used for weight training that the technician and he had talked about before.

When her husband got close to her, Jones-McAllister said, “at that instant, the machine switched him around, pulled him in and he hit the MRI.”

“I said, ‘Could you turn off the machine, call 911, do something. Turn this damn thing off!’” she told News 12 Long Island.

“He went limp in my arms.”

She said the technician tried to pull McAllister from the machine but could not.

“He waved goodbye to me, then his whole body went limp,” she said.

Police said he had a medical episode after being pulled into the machine, but police did not give any details of what the episode entailed.

However, Jones-McAllister said her husband had heart attacks after the incident.

He was in critical condition when he was taken to a hospital, The Washington Post reported, but McAllister died from his injuries on July 17, police said in an updated release.

Police are investigating and the MRI center did not provide a statement when asked by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

An MRI, which stands for magnetic resonance imaging, uses magnets and radio frequencies to create images of the internal workings of the body. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering said, "The magnetic field extends beyond the machine and exerts very powerful forces on objects of iron, some steels, and other magnetizable objects," adding that it can make a wheelchair fly through the air.

Patients are told to remove all jewelry before entering a device and some people with medical implants are advised not to have an MRI scan. They are also loud, producing sound as loud as 120 decibels.

This was not the first injury or death connected to an MRI machine.

A 6-year-old boy died in 2001 when an oxygen tank flew across a room, hitting him in his head while he was having a scan, CBS News reported. The family settled a lawsuit for $2.9 million, the AP reported.

A nurse in California was injured when she was pinned between a hospital bed and an MRI machine in 2023, KTVU reported.

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