Mississippi mom shoots dead escaped lab monkey in her yard after 'hepatitis' fears
Jessica Bond Ferguson said she was alerted early Sunday by her 16-year-old son who said he thought he had seen a monkey running in the yard outside their home near Heidelberg, Mississippi.
One of the monkeys that escaped from an overturned truck on a Mississippi roadway last week has been shot and killed on Sunday by a woman who said she feared for her children's safety.
Jessica Bond Ferguson said she was alerted early Sunday by her 16-year-old son who said he thought he had seen a monkey running in the yard outside their home near Heidelberg, Mississippi. She got out of bed, grabbed her firearm and her cellphone stepped outside where she saw the monkey about 60 feet away.
Bond Ferguson said she and other residents had been warned about diseases that the escaped monkeys carried so she fired her gun. Earlier reports, later dismissed by experts, suggested they were carrying hepatitis.
“I did what any other mother would do to protect her children,” Bond Ferguson, who has five children ranging in age from 4 to 16, told The Associated Press. “I shot at it and it just stood there, and I shot again, and he backed up and that’s when he fell.”
The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office confirmed in a social media post that a homeowner had found one of the monkeys on their property Sunday morning but said the office didn’t have any details. The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks took possession of the monkey, the sheriff’s office said.
The Rhesus monkeys had been housed at the Tulane University National Biomedical Research Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, which routinely provides primates to scientific research organizations, according to the university. In a statement last week, Tulane said the monkeys do not belong to the university, and they were not being transported by the university.
A truck carrying the monkeys overturned on Tuesday on Interstate 59 north of Heidelberg. Authorities said that most of the 21 monkeys had been killed during the initial crash, but a handful of them survived. But the sheriffs department said experts from Tulane examined the trailer and concluded that three of the monkeys had escaped.
The Mississippi Highway Patrol has said it was investigating the cause of the crash, which occurred about 100 miles from the state capital, Jackson.
Rhesus monkeys typically weigh about 16 pounds and are among the most medically studied animals on the planet. Video recorded after the crash showed monkeys crawling through tall grass beside the interstate, where wooden crates labeled “live animals” were crumpled and strewn about.
Jasper County Sheriff Randy Johnson had said Tulane officials reported the monkeys were not infectious, despite initial reports by the truck’s occupants warning that the monkeys were dangerous and harboring various diseases. Nonetheless, Johnson said the monkeys still needed to be “neutralized” because of their aggressive nature.
The monkeys had recently received checkups confirming they were pathogen-free, Tulane said in a statement Wednesday.
Rhesus macaques “are known to be aggressive,” according to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. It said the agency’s conservation workers were working with sheriff’s officials in the search for the animals.