Adrienne told the local outlet News 12 Long Island that an MRI machine there was scanning her knee when she called out to her husband, “Keith, come help me up” from the table. The technician operating the machine – which looks like a long, narrow tube with openings on each end – then allowed Keith to walk in while he wore a nearly 20lb (9kg) metal chain that he used for weight training.

Police in Nassau county, New York, said Keith was then sucked into the device by its potent magnetic force. He endured “a medical episode” at that point which left him in critical condition at a hospital, and he was pronounced dead a day later, police said.

Adrienne told News 12 that her late husband had suffered several heart attacks after the incident with the MRI machine and before his death. She recalled, through tears, “seeing the machine snatch him and pull him into the machine”.

She said she implored for the clinic to call for emergency help and, referring to the machine, to “turn this damn thing off!”

But eventually Keith “went limp in my arms”, Adrienne recounted. “This is still pulsating in my brain.”