one of those monkeys ran away last week A woman who said she feared for the safety of her children was shot and killed early Sunday after a truck overturned on a Mississippi highway.
Jessica Bond Ferguson said she was alerted early Sunday by her 16-year-old son, who said he thought he saw a monkey running around outside their home near Heidelberg, Mississippi. She got out of bed, picked up her weapon and her cellphone and went outside where she saw the monkey about 60 feet (18 m) away.
Bond Ferguson said he and other residents were warned that the escaped monkeys were spreading diseases so he fired his gun.
“I did what any other mother would do to protect her kids,” Bond Ferguson, who has five children ranging in age from 4 to 16, told The Associated Press. “I fired at him and he stood there, and I fired again, and he stepped back and that’s when he fell.”
The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office confirmed in a social media post that a homeowner found one of the monkeys on their property Sunday morning, but said the office had no details. The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks took custody of the monkey, the sheriff’s office said.
Before Bond Ferguson went out the door, he called the police and asked them to keep an eye on the monkey. But he worried that if the monkey ran away, the children of the other house would be in danger.
“If it attacked someone’s child, and I could stop it, that would be a big deal to me,” said professional chef Bond Ferguson, 35. “It’s a little scary and dangerous that they’re running around, and people’s kids are playing in their yards.”
The rhesus monkeys were housed at the Tulane University National Biomedical Research Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, according to the university, which regularly provides primates to scientific research organizations. In a statement last week, Tulane said the monkeys did not belong to the university, and they were not being transported by the university.
A truck carrying monkeys overturned Tuesday on Interstate 59 north of Heidelberg. According to Tulane, 13 of the 21 monkeys in the truck were found at the crash site and returned to their original destination last week. Five other people were killed in the search for them three left Before Sunday.
The Mississippi Highway Patrol said it was investigating the cause of the crash, which occurred about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Jackson, the state capital.
Rhesus monkeys typically weigh around 16 pounds (7.2 kg) and are among the most medically studied animals on the planet. Video recorded after the accident showed monkeys crawling among tall grass along the interstate road, where wooden boxes labeled “live animals” were scattered.
Jasper County Sheriff Randy Johnson said Tulane officials reported that the monkeys were not contagious, while initial reports from the people in the truck warned that the monkeys were dangerous and carried a variety of diseases. Nonetheless, Johnson said the monkeys still need to be “neutered” due to their aggressive nature.
The monkeys were recently tested, which confirmed they were pathogen-free, Tulane said in a statement Wednesday.
According to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, rhesus macaques are “considered invasive”. It said the agency’s conservation workers were working with sheriff’s officers to search for the animals.
This discovery comes almost a year later 43 rhesus macaques escaped From a compound in South Carolina that breeds them for medical research because an employee did not completely close an enclosure. employees from alpha genesis facility Nets were set to catch them in Yamasee, South Carolina.
