Dumb ass. This happens every now and then and it's always from morons not being able to follow very basic instructions and assuming they know better than the hospital who owns the big dangerous piece of equipment.
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
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I get MRIs on a pretty regular basis, so here are my thoughts.
First off, the door to the MRI room automatically locks. I'm pretty sure that there's even a sign or an instruction they give that if I squeeze the emergency ball that I need help or need out, there will be a small delay to open the door. I have typically gone to large facilities and hospitals though so maybe these small "open MRI" places don't have the same rules and policies.
Second, yes it is made very very clear how you should not take in metal, on or inside you. Even if you've already done it 10 times, you're going through the questions and checklist.
And finally, even if there are no people around and all doors are unlocked, there are also signs that make it very clear that the magnet is always on.
"entered an unauthorized Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) room while the scan was in progress,"
This sentence produces questions. Was the MRI room really unauthorized? Or did the man enter without authorization?
I read elsewhere that he entered without authorization, the headline is rubbish.
How is a random person able to walk into an MRI room, especially with the MRI machine in progress? Hasn't anyone heard of door locks there?
Pure gold will heat up according to my reading, but won't be pulled in.
What if he thought or told people it was pure gold and it would be fine but it was just a plated steel chain?
Arrested development, S3E11
George: ... The prosecution is going to want to have access to the hard drive, so I just want to make sure everything is nice and clean for them.
Michael: What the hell is that thing?
George: An electromagnet. Think of it as a giant delete key.
..
Lucille enters. Her necklace is ripped from her and snaps to the electromagnet across the room.
Lucille: That’s not a real gold necklace, is it?
George: Well, it wasn’t really your 50th birthday.
Happened in a physics course from my old teacher. A girl had a golden chain she got from her boyfriend and was sure it was pure gold, until that faithful outing to visit the nearby universities particle accelerator...
which is extra dumb when you realise no jewellery is ever pure gold. It is 22K. Otherwise it cannot withstand daily wear and tear.
the man “entered an unauthorized Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) room while the scan was in progress,”
He didn't tell anybody anything. He wasn't supposed to be in there.
My guess is that someone forgot to lock the door. My question is, why isn't it an electronic lock that prevents operation of the machine if it's not locked?
why isn't it an electronic lock that prevents operation of the machine if it's not locked?
Because that would throw the liability on the facility when the system inevitably failed, or was bypassed because the $1000 lock mechanism was preventing the $10m MRI from working.
Much easier to slap up a couple of warning signs and tell people not to be dumb.
I'm pretty sure that wouldn't protect their liability when everyone knows door locks exist.
Okay, say there's an emergency with the patient being scanned. The people getting scanned are usually very sick.
Say the patient has a heart attack, or can't breathe, or something malfunctioned and caught on fire.
What happens if the door malfunctions? Or the key is dropped/misplaced? Or any similar scenario occurs that delays help when seconds count?
You put a manual override on the electric lock. This is usually done in a way that the person triggering the override cannot also be the person opening the door. They can be well marked and obvious in operation that way as it would require at least two people.
This should only be required in the event of an electric lock failure or some other kind of emergency where the electric lock has some other safety condition(s) that must be met before it will unlock that needs to be bypassed. It shouldn’t be needed on a regular basis.
Sledgehammer
Metal tho.
why isn't it an electronic lock that prevents operation of the machine if it's not locked?
Why not make it simpler and make it a magnetic lock that simply locks the door by being pulled towards the machine? (With a mechanical override so you can get in if you really want to and have the key.)
Either:
The door is too far to get pulled by the MRI, or it's such an intense force that you would lose a limb in the door.
The magnet doesn't get turned off when not scanning
Had to bring my daughter for an MRI recently. They are very very clear about removing all metal.
I had an MRI recently and while they were obviously very strict about no metal on/in my body while scanning, my husband was allowed to stay in the room wearing his metal framed glasses and metal belt buckle, it wasn't a problem. This makes me wonder how fucking big that chain was.
Yeah very similar experience. I asked about the button on my jeans as the second person in the room and that was fine. He must have been very very close to the magnets.
I had one a couple weeks ago. Where I went I had to be buzzed into a waiting room then buzzed into the MRI room itself. Without a card key or an escort there was no way for me to enter the room.
And yeah, I was also asked more than once about having any metal on me.
I wouldn't trust people to tell the truth. People are idiots. I hope they also use metal detectors.
Wouldn't want a doctor or nurse getting a prince Albert to the eye because the patient was too embarrassed to mention it.
The language here is really confusing and the link to the police statement is broken for me. When they say and unauthorized MRI room do they mean he was unauthorized to enter or something about the MRI room being unauthorized, like a backroom dodgy deal sort of thing?
Context clues help. What’s more likely - someone walking into a room they weren’t supposed to, or some place trying to covertly use a $500k-$1 million multi-ton machine whose operation is anything but discrete.
Yeah, I think the sentence structure is not really clear and while reality tries very hard to constrain humans we are creative and make chaos wherever we go. Could it have been a backroom MRI? I mean, I should be able to say absolutely not, definitely not, and yet, here we are. The modern American healthcare system is so scam and grift filled that the idea of someone taking an MRI, maybe an old outdated one, and then offering services without proper training and oversight so they can undercut and make a profit is not outlandish. It should be so obvious this was bad wording. We live in the worst timeline.
I found a NY Times article, which starts out:
A man who entered an M.R.I. room during a scan in Westbury, N.Y., on Wednesday was pulled into the machine by his chain necklace and was hospitalized in critical condition, the authorities said.
The man, who is 61, was wearing a “large metallic chain” around his neck when he entered the room at Nassau Open MRI around 4:34 p.m., according to the Nassau County Police Department, on Long Island. The man, whom the police did not name, did not have authorization to enter the room, the authorities said.
61, was wearing a “large metallic chain” around his neck
Was this guy a dog? Gangster?
How does one simply enter an MRI room so easily while it's running?
Such a bizarre story.
If the door isn't locked... well, yeah you can just enter.
It'll stop the scan. But that's about it. The magnet never turns off unless you hit the quench button, which will cause irriversable damage. Only used in matters of life and death.
I've had a few, but I don't recall it ever being easy to just walk in. Considering how dangerous they can be, it seems like someone messed up.
Unauthorized 61 year old man walks into an active MRI room wearing a steel/gold plated neck chain... I assume he ignored the giant warning signs.
Safety warnings are for woke liberal snowflakes!
We need to start authorizing people to be 61.
As long as they pass regular competency tests to prove they're not a danger to society (e.g., intending to run for president or some nonsense like that), yeah, sure, why not.
Otherwise, though, it's Soylent Green time.
Maybe he thought it was real gold, which would've been safe?
I wouldn't go into an MRI room if I wasn't a patient naked in just a gown. Fuck that.
Even something like a belt buckle could get yanked.
The "while the scan was in progress" part made it pretty clear to me that he was someplace that he wasn't supposed to be.
However, "unauthorized Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) room" also very clearly states that the room itself did not have proper authorization.
My guess is that it failed to get authorization due to the lack of electronic door locks that prevent people from wandering in while the machine is hot. /s
I had the same complaint/confusion, thankfully elucidated by others' earlier replies.
I conclude that this ABC journalist, Meredith Deliso, is simply incompetent and ill-suited to her profession, lacking talent and verve for clarity of expression. Fuckin' typical.
The former. He was never meant to enter that room while the MRI was being conducted for another patient.
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We invented magic force fields that attract certain metals. The power was always in the universe; we just had to discover and learn how to harness it. We can see inside your mind with it. But if you don't do exactly as I say, it can kill you. So, are you absolutely sure you don't have anything, and I mean anything, that is metal?
What're you, broke?
That's a hell of a chain. I'd be interested to see how big it was and what his injuries were
MRIs develop carzy strong fields. Here's a test with an office chair: https://youtu.be/6BBx8BwLhqg
Great little vid, thx!
Big enough that it didn’t slice his head off, at least.
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They check your nipples, penis, vagina, belly button and ears for rings. Specially rings attached to them, which could be potentially awful to see after the MRI.
If by checking you mean asking, yes. I've had multiple MRI scans and was asked. No one looked at these areas, I remained fully clothed the entire time.
Yeah, I had one mri and they stressed knowing if there was any metal but they didn't like, pat me down or anything. I even told them about my filings and root canals and they asked when I got them then said they were fine (unlikely to interact at all, probably ceramic based)
That's stupidly dangerous. People a) lie, b) are idiots, and c) continuously forget the most obvious things, like where we placed the glasses we're currently wearing. Often all at the same time.
Especially when stressed, for instance when about to get an MRI and being asked embarrassing questions, possibly while being high on whatever drugs they've got you on.
I'd expect them to at least use metal detectors.
Wouldn't want a doctor or nurse to get a prince Albert to the eye just because the patient was too embarrassed to mention it.
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