One of the monkeys that escaped after a truck overturned in Mississippi last week was shot dead by a woman who said she feared for the safety of her children.
Jessica Bond Ferguson said she and other residents had been warned that the escaped monkeys carried diseases. “I did what any other mother would do to protect her children,” she told the Associated Press.
The monkeys were being housed at Tulane University’s National Biomedical Research Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, for scientific research purposes and escaped last weekend while being transported.
Officials from the university said that the monkeys did not have “any infectious agent”.
The 35-year-old mother of five said her 16-year-old son alerted her to a monkey in their backyard in Mississippi.
That is when she got out of bed and grabbed her gun and her cell phone and spotted the animal some 60ft (18m) away.
“I shot at it and it just stood there, and I shot again, and he backed up and that’s when he fell,” she told the AP.
The Jasper County Sheriff’s Department confirmed a local resident “encountered” one of the monkeys and said the animal was in the possession of the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks.
There has been confusion surrounding the escape, including how many monkeys were being transported, who owned them, and why the truck overturned.
Tulane University said the animals “were not being transported by Tulane, not owned by Tulane, and not in Tulane’s custody”.
It added that although Tulane “did not transport or own the nonhuman primates at the time of the incident”, it sent “a team of animal care experts to assist” officials.
Videos shared online showed the monkeys moving through the tall grass on the side of the Mississippi highway. On the highway were wooden crates with the label “live animals”.
The monkeys being transported were Rhesus monkeys, animals that are commonly used in biomedical research, particularly in studies of infectious diseases and vaccine development.
