One of the escaped monkeys in Mississippi was shot and killed Sunday morning by a mother who told the Associated Press she feared for the safety of her children.
Jessica Bond Ferguson, a mother of five living in Heidelberg, Mississippi, was alerted to a monkey running in the yard outside their home by her 16-year-old son earlier that morning. When she looked outside, she saw the monkey was just 60 feet from their house.
Ferguson told the AP, “I did what any other mother would do to protect her children. I shot at it and it just stood there, and I shot again, and he backed up and that’s when he fell.”
This incident is connected to an overturned truck in late October that was carrying Rhesus monkeys from the Tulane National Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana. The accident led to 21 monkeys escaping from the vehicle.
Out of those 21 monkeys, 13 were rounded up by authorities. Five were shot on sight after a supervisor mistakenly claimed the monkeys were infected with COVID-19, herpes, and hepatitis C. Authorities later clarified that the monkeys were not infected. However, three monkeys escaped into the wild.
One of the remaining escaped monkeys was found and captured by authorities on Sunday as well, leaving just one monkey still on the loose.
https://www.tmz.com/2025/11/02/escaped-monkey-mississippi-killed-frightened-mother/
