Martin Luther King high student dies of staph infection

The Philadelphia School District called off yesterday's football game between Edison and Martin Luther King high schools after learning from the city Health Department that the sudden death of a King player on Tuesday had been caused by MRSA.

The fast-moving staph bacteria infection can be spread through skin-to-skin contact.

Saalen Jones, 17, a 5-foot-6, 150-pound senior cornerback at King, missed a week of practices and a Sept. 19 game because of painful stiffness in his swollen neck.

His father, James Osborne, took him to a hospital on Monday, but the cause of his pain remained unknown.

Osborne came home from work on Tuesday to find his son semiconscious in their West Oak Lane home. Jones died at Albert Einstein Medical Center later that night.

School district spokesman Fernando Gallard said that all King football players who may have come in close contact with Jones or shared equipment with him were screened for open sores by school nurses yesterday.

Two of the players were then referred to their personal physicians. All of the football equipment was cleaned according to health department guidelines.

"We're talking about skin-to-skin contact with an open wound that is infected," said Rhona Cooper, a school district health-services coordinator.

"It's important for people to understand that MRSA can't get passed through the air or by sharing a pencil or by casually bumping into someone."

Gallard said that earlier responses to cases of MRSA - "closing schools and steaming the hallways" - missed the point.

He said yesterday's game was called off to "allow time for parents to be fully informed about this very sad and serious thing that happened." A letter and a MRSA fact sheet were sent home to King parents.

Cooper said that parents concerned about "open sores that are swollen, hot to the touch or have any kind of oozing, which indicates infection" should take their children to a doctor.

"If the fluid coming from an open wound has MRSA bacteria, you cannot self-diagnose it," she said.

Osborne said: "When we were in the hospital emergency room, and they said they didn't know what was wrong with him, I asked them if it could be a staph infection. They said no."

He said that his son had a turf burn - a common football abrasion - on his stomach but that it seemed to be healing, not infected.

"I don't understand how this could be MRSA," Osborne said. "It's supposed to be highly contagious. But I'm fine, my wife is fine, my 5-month-old grandson is fine. The King football players are over here so often that I have to tell them to get off the steps so I can get into the house. As far as I know, no one on the team is sick. So how could this have killed my son?" *

Staff writer Ted Silary contributed to this story.