By Janice Morse
The Cincinnati Enquirer

More than a decade before the death of 6-year-old Jarod Bennett of Lebanon, folding mobile tables - commonly used in school lunchrooms across the nation - had hurt or killed other youngsters, authorities say.

Ken Giles, a spokesman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said no one knows how many such accidents have happened, but data suggest "this is a somewhat rare event, even though it's very serious when it happens."

In November 1989, "every school district in the country received an order form for a free supply of warning labels" about the potential hazards, the commission said. Earlier, the commission had received reports that six children had died and 14 others had been injured while moving the tables or playing on them.

Warning labels on any product are limited in effectiveness because they may escape users' notice - or be purposely ignored, Giles said. "Even if every mobile folding table in the United States had a warning label on it, I'm not sure we could prevent all of these (accidents)," he said. "Labels can only do so much."

The 290-pound table that fell onto Jarod bore one of the yellow warning labels; so do the other lunch tables at his school, officials said.

In a 1996 public advisory, the commission says the tables are typically about 6 feet tall when folded and could weigh up to 350 pounds. Such tables might tip over when the wheel or bottom edge of the table hits a child's foot or other obstruction, or when a child attempts to ride on it as it's being moved, the commission said.

Jarod was participating in the Prime Time after-school program run by the Ralph J. Stolle Countryside YMCA at Louisa Wright Elementary School in Lebanon.

Steve Boland, president and CEO of the Countryside Y, said, "You keep going through what-ifs and what-ifs."

"Everything was done the way it was always done. ...It was just a horrible, horrible accident," he said.

When the table fell, "they were getting ready as they always do at 5:45 to end the program, and those tables are moved at that time." What's more, before the Y personnel conduct their program, the tables are "moved back and forth, probably five or six times" during the regular school day, Boland said.

The tables have been used at the school for lunch and crafts for many years, Boland and school officials said.

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Sue Kiesewetter contributed.

E-mail jmorse@enquirer.com