5-Year-Old Dies After Being Left Alone in Room at Church

Published: 3/22/2019, 2:43:48 PM EDT

5-Year-Old Dies After Being Left Alone in Room at Church — Signs And Wonders Apostolic Outreach Ministries, in Houston, Texas. (Screenshot via Google Maps)

A 5-year-old died after a table toppled on him in church, in the evening of March 21.

Harris County Sheriff's deputies told KHOU that the boy was brought to Children's Memorial Hermann in the Texas Medical Center, in an attempt to save the child’s life.

The boy was at Signs and Wonders Apostolic Outreach Ministries in Houston when the table hit him.

The sheriff’s office told KTRK that the accident happened at around 9:45 p.m. When deputies arrived at the church they were told the boy was playing in a room by himself when a large granite shelf fell. Officials later confirmed it was a table.

Authorities are investigating to see if there was something on the table that made it fall, KTRK reported.

In February, the Associated Press reported that a Missouri school district decided to remove all wall-mounted tables from two schools after one of them fell on and killed a 4-year-old student.

The 4-year-old died after a table at Poplar Bluff Early Childhood Center fell despite the table using multiple safety features to prevent such an occurrence.

NBC 4 reported in 2015 that a 7-year-old boy in New Jersey was killed by a stowed bench. The boy was playing soccer inside Berkley Street Elementary School in New Milford when a 108-pound bench fell on him.

He had kicked the ball towards an area that stored benches and folding tables. When he went to get the ball back, the bench fell. It’s not clear if Jordan bumped into the bench to cause it to fall.

The boy was with a soccer team practicing for an upcoming game. An off-duty policeman who was coaching the group administered CPR to try to save the boy after he was injured. The boy was then rushed to the hospital but died before he could be admitted.

The school said the tables had been installed 11 years prior, and there had never been a problem with them during that time.

An infographic by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission says that a child dies every two weeks when a TV, appliance, or piece of furniture falls on him or her. The most fatalities occur for children from 3- to 5-years-old.

Televisions and related furniture are the most common things to fall on children. Dressers and tables cause the next highest number of deaths. Usually the victim is crushed.

Injuries due to falling appliances, TV, or furniture occur to 25,400 children per year. The commission recommends talking steps to anchor these things to prevent them from tipping over.

A couple recently told the Connecticut Post a scary story about when their 5-year-old daughter Everett attempted to climb a dresser to reach a pair of tights.

"There’s a stool in her room, which she usually uses, but I guess she decided it would be faster to climb up, so she started to step on one of the drawers," said the girl’s father, Scott Saltz, via Connecticut Post.

The dresser fell forward but narrowly missed Everett.

"The dresser fell across the whole room and hit her bed," said Scott. "Thankfully, she wasn't really trapped."

The girl escaped tragedy with only a bruise on her hip, and a lesson in safety for the family.

"We didn't anchor it because we felt like it was a sturdy piece of furniture," said Joanna Saltz. "We thought, 'This isn’t an Ikea piece. It’ll stay upright!,' which is, I’m sure, what everyone says right before it topples over."