Mississippi woman kills escaped monkey fearing for her children’s safety

One of the monkeys that escaped last week after a truck overturned on a Mississippi highway was shot and killed early Sunday by a woman who said she feared for the safety of her children.

Jessica Bond Ferguson said she was alerted early Sunday by her 16-year-old son who said he thought he saw a monkey running in the yard outside their home near Heidelberg, Mississippi. She got out of bed, grabbed her gun and cell phone and went outside where she saw the monkey about 60 feet away.

Bond said she and other residents were warned about the diseases the fleeing monkeys carried, so she fired her gun.

“I did what any other mother would do to protect their children,” Bond, who has five children ages 4 to 16, told the Associated Press. “I pulled on it and it stayed there, and I pulled again, and it pulled back and that’s where it fell.”

The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office confirmed in a social media post that a homeowner found one of the monkeys on his property Sunday morning, but said the office had no details. The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks took possession of the monkey, the sheriff’s office said.

The rhesus monkeys were housed at Tulane University’s National Biomedical Research Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, which regularly supplies primates to scientific research organizations, according to the university. In a statement released last week, Tulane said the monkeys were not owned by the university and were not transported by the university.

A truck carrying the monkeys overturned Tuesday on Interstate 59, north of Heidelberg. Authorities said most of the 21 monkeys were killed. The sheriff’s department said animal experts from Tulane examined the trailer and determined that three monkeys had escaped.

The Mississippi Highway Patrol said it was investigating the cause of the crash, which occurred about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the state capital, Jackson.

Rhesus monkeys typically weigh around 16 pounds (7.2 kilograms) and are among the most medically studied animals on the planet. Video recorded after the crash showed monkeys crawling in tall grass beside the highway, where wooden crates labeled “live animals” were crumpled and scattered.

Jasper County Sheriff Randy Johnson said Tulane officials said the monkeys were not contagious, despite initial reports from the truck’s occupants warning that the monkeys were dangerous and carrying various diseases. Nonetheless, Johnson said the monkeys still needed to be “neutralized” due to their aggressive nature.

The monkeys recently underwent examinations confirming they were free of pathogens, Tulane said in a statement Wednesday.

About 10 years ago, three rhesus macaques in the breeding colony at what was then known as the Tulane National Primate Research Center were euthanized after a “biosecurity violation,” federal inspectors wrote in a 2015 report. The violation involved at least one staff member failing to follow biosafety and infection control procedures, it said.

The facility then changed its procedures and retrained its staff, according to the report from the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Rhesus macaques “are known to be aggressive,” according to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. He said the agency’s conservation officers were working with sheriff’s officials to search for the animals.

The research comes about a year after 43 rhesus macaques escaped from a South Carolina compound that breeds them for medical research because an employee did not completely lock an enclosure. Employees at the Alpha Genesis factory in Yemassee, South Carolina, had set traps to capture them.