MRSA Outbreak Kills Virginia Student

A popular Virginia school student was the victim of a deadly drug-resistant strain of bacteria that has turned up in schools across the country recently. Ashton Bonds was a senior at Staunton River High School in Moneta, Virginia, who was diagnosed with MRSA.

MRSA, short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is responsible for more deaths in the United States each year than AIDS, according to new data.

"I was standing beside his bed and ... I said, 'Baby, we're supposed to be having a graduation this year, you've got to come up out of this and get better,'" his mother, Veronica Bonds, remembered. After struggling with the infection for a week, the 17-year-old died on Monday.Students at his school organized a rally, saying the school needed to be cleaned up before they went back to class.

"If we sent the whole student body back into the school, then more people would just come down [with] it and maybe even result in another death," student Chelsea Woods told CNN. "So we sent out a bunch of text messages, got on MySpace and posted a few bulletins, and decided to have a rally around the flagpole to make sure this doesn't happen again."

Officials closed all 22 schools in Bedford County for cleaning this week.

The situation at Staunton River High was not an isolated incident. On Wednesday, school officials in Connecticut confirmed that one student at Weston High School and one at Newton High School had been diagnosed with MRSA. In Rockville, Maryland, at least 13 students have been diagnosed with MRSA.Cases have been reported in Ohio, Michigan and other states.

Although school principals have observed that the bacteria predominantly affects student athletes, cases have been reported in children of elementary school age as well.