Montgomery Teacher With Staph Infection Dies

A Montgomery County teacher who contracted a virulent staph infection died Sunday night, worrying parents and raising new concerns about the bacteria.

Merry King, 48, a special education teacher at Herbert Hoover Middle School in Rockville, had been in a coma for six days before dying of complications from the bacteria, known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, her daughter, Charlotte Oliver, said yesterday.

Parents said they were shocked to learn of the teacher's death, and school officials sought to allay concerns about the potential for the infection to spread.

Principal Billie-Jean Bensen told parents in a letter sent home with students that there is no indication that King contracted the infection at work. She wrote that there is no reason to believe anyone at the school is at risk for contracting the MRSA infection.

Brian Edwards, chief of staff for the Montgomery school superintendent, Jerry D. Weast, said King had not been at the school since Nov. 30. He said that as a precaution, the classroom where King taught 26 students was sanitized with a bleach solution last night.

Edwards added that students have been in the classroom since King left and that classes were held in the room yesterday.

King's family had few details about the circumstances of her death.

"We don't know where she contracted it, and the doctors weren't sure how long she had had it or where it had come from," Oliver said.

School officials became aware of King's diagnosis Saturday night, when her daughter told Bensen about the infection, Edwards said.

County Health Officer Ulder Tillman said the school followed protocol for addressing King's death.

Maryland health officials could not determine last night whether King was the first in the state to die of the infection.

Concern across the region about MRSA was heightened this fall after a student from Bedford County, Va., died of the infection in October. Soon after, schools in the Washington area reported dozens of cases.