Widow Sues Westbury Radiology Over Fatal MRI Chain Incident

Keith McAllister, 61, of Hempstead, went to Nassau Open MRI on Old Country Road in Westbury on July 16, 2025, simply to help his wife through a routine knee scan. He never came home. His widow, Adrienne Jones McAllister, has filed a lawsuit in Nassau County Supreme Court against four defendants, alleging that fatal negligence in safety screening cost her husband his life.

McAllister was wearing a 20-pound weight-training chain secured with a large lock around his neck, the kind used for resistance exercise. When Adrienne asked an MRI technician to bring her husband into the scan room to help her off the table after her knee scan was complete, the technician, who the family says had already seen the chain, permitted him to enter while the machine was still running. The magnet's field seized the chain the moment McAllister crossed the threshold, violently pulling him into the device.

Adrienne and the technician both tried to free him for several minutes before calling 911. "My mother and the tech tried for several minutes to release him before the police were called," McAllister's stepdaughter, Samantha Bodden, wrote in a GoFundMe appeal. "He was attached to the machine for almost an hour before they could release the chain from the machine." Adrienne later recalled the last moments before her husband lost consciousness: "He waved goodbye to me and then his whole body went limp."

Nassau County Police, who responded to a 911 call at approximately 4:34 p.m., initially described McAllister's entry into the scan room as "unauthorized." The family strongly disputes that account, with Bodden insisting the technician explicitly retrieved McAllister to assist Adrienne, and that staff had already observed him wearing the chain. After emergency crews freed him, McAllister suffered three heart attacks and was rushed to a nearby hospital. He died the following day, July 17, 2025.

The lawsuit names Nassau Open MRI P.C., East Coast Radiology P.C., Sun Enterprises, and GM Partners Westbury LLC. The complaint alleges that staff allowed McAllister into the MRI room without proper screening, failed to instruct him to remove the chain, did not shut down the machine before he entered, and did not activate emergency procedures once he became trapped. It also includes a "zone of danger" claim on behalf of Adrienne, arguing that witnessing her husband's suffering and death caused her severe and permanent psychological injuries. The complaint states: "Defendants knew or should have known that allowing individuals with metallic objects into the MRI room presents a serious and well documented risk of catastrophic injury, including death." A representative for Nassau Open MRI declined to comment.

The family's legal team is led by nationally recognized civil rights attorney Ben Crump, known for representing the families of Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, and named to Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People list in 2021. Co-counsel Andrew Finkelstein, Managing Partner of Finkelstein & Partners and President of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, joins initial attorney Michael Lauterborn of Smith, Cheung & Lauterborn PC. "This horrific and entirely preventable tragedy underscores the critical importance of safety protocols in medical facilities," Crump said. "Keith McAllister should be alive today. No one, especially someone simply accompanying their loved one, should be exposed to fatal danger in a medical setting."

MRI-related deaths are extraordinarily rare in New York but not without precedent. In July 2001, six-year-old Michael Colombini of Croton-on-Hudson was killed at Westchester Medical Center when a ferromagnetic oxygen tank was pulled into an MRI machine and crushed his skull. The Colombini family settled that case for $2.9 million in 2010, and his death is now commemorated annually as MRI Safety Week, which prompted sweeping changes to global MRI safety guidelines.

The machines rely on electromagnets powerful enough that, according to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, their magnetic fields can "fling a wheelchair across the room." The FDA estimates roughly 69% of MRI magnet accidents involve metallic implants or devices, and the agency currently requires reporting only for incidents resulting in serious injury or death, a regulatory gap that safety advocates have long argued fuels systemic underreporting.

Both the Nassau County Police Department and the New York State Department of Health are investigating. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.