A veteran was wounded Wednesday at Richard L. Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center when a handgun he brought into the Indianapolis hospital accidentally discharged in his pocket while he was in a procedure room — possibly an MRI suite.
Hospital officials confirmed the accidental shooting in a statement issued Thursday and reported the victim, whose name was not released, received immediate medical attention. The statement added the man’s wound did not threaten his life.
A hospital spokesman initially confirmed in a telephone call from The Indianapolis Star that the incident involved an MRI, but the subsequent statement said only that the incident occurred “in a procedure room.” When asked for clarification about the involvement of the MRI, the spokesman said in an email that the statement “is our response at this time.”
The statement noted it is a violation of federal and state law to bring a firearm into the hospital and “notification of this law is posted at every entrance.”
Having a gun or other metal object in the vicinity of an MRI machine would also be a violation of widely accepted medical and safety protocol, according to American Journal of Roentgenology, and could have fatal consequences. It was unclear Thursday if criminal charges would be pursued. The Marion County prosecutor’s office was closed Thursday.
The accident at Roudebush may be the first time in the U.S. that a patient was wounded when a gun discharged in an MRI unit.
It also is at least the second instance of a handgun accidentally firing in the suite of one powerful imagining machines which, according to WebMD, use “a magnetic field and pulses of radio wave energy to make pictures of organs and structures inside the body.”
In the other case, according to a 2002 report in the American Journal of Roentgenology, a gun discharged in an MRI after it was pulled from the hand of an off-duty police officer as he attempted to place the weapon on a cabinet about 3 feet away from the MRI’s magnet bore. No one was injured in that case.
In 2009, another off-duty police officer in Florida sustained a minor hand injury when her department-issued gun was pulled inside an MRI machine. Jacksonville TV station WJTX reported the injury occurred when her hand became trapped between the gun and magnet.
Another MRI accident — which involved a metal object, but not a gun — claimed the life of a 6-year-old New York boy in 2001.
The deadly accident at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., occurred when a metal oxygen tank about the size of a fire extinguisher was pulled into the MRI and fractured the boy’s skull, according to the New York Times.
In a report on the 2002 incident in New York involving a handgun, the Journal of Roentgenology found, the police officer’s “gun was immediately pulled into the bore, where it struck the left side and spontaneously discharged a round into the wall of the room at the rear of the magnet.”
At the time the .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol fired, the report said, “it was reportedly in a cocked and locked position; that is, the hammer was cocked and the thumb safety was engaged to prevent the hammer from striking the firing pin.” There also was a live round in the chamber.
“Many people who choose this weapon for personal protection will carry it in this manner because it allows them to quickly fire the weapon if needed,” the report noted.
The discharge was likely “a result of the effect of the magnetic field on the firing pin block,” the report said.
“The firing pin block was probably drawn into its uppermost position by force of the magnetic field. The firing pin block has to overcome only light pressure from a relatively small spring to release the firing pin. The pistol was likely drawn into the magnetic field so that the muzzle struck the magnet’s bore first. With the firing pin allowed to move freely in its channel, the force of the impact on the muzzle end was sufficient to cause the firing pin to overcome its spring pressure and move forward to strike the primer of the chambered round.”
From a wonkish standpoint, I find this quite interesting. I would have liked a picture (or set of pictures) to go along with the explanation, though. Do we have any gunsmiths who can elaborate and clarify for us?
