California middle school teacher Leah Seneng, who died a month after a bat bit her inside a classroom, was remembered by friends and colleagues as "dedicated" and a "lover of life."

The 60-year-old woman tried to scoop up a bat found in her classroom and take it outside when the animal, which presumably had rabies, bit her.

Art teacher Leah Seneng, 60, was trying to help a bat find its way out of her classroom when she was apparently bitten. She died a month later from rabies.

A California middle school teacher has died after contracting rabies via a bat that flew into her classroom. Leah Seneng, 60, found the bat in her classroom in mid-October. When she went to pick it up and put it outside, it bit her, the woman’s friend, Laura Splotch, told ABC 30.

A California art teacher died of rabies November 22, about a month after apparently being infected by a bat she found in her classroom.

A friend of the woman who died from a rabies bite in Merced County said the bite happened inside her friend’s Dos Palos classroom.  Laura Splotch

A California middle school teacher has reportedly died after she was bitten by a bat inside her classroom in Dos Palos

A California art teacher died from rabies last month after apparently being infected by a bat she found in her classroom.

A California art teacher has died one month after she was apparently bitten and infected with rabies by a bat she found inside her classroom.

Leah Seneng, a Central California teacher, died from rabies after she was bitten last month by a bat that she found in her classroom.

A Central California woman died from rabies after she was bitten by a bat, officials said Tuesday, in the first death from the saliva-passed disease in her county in more than 30 years.