Nationwide — Jessica Bond Ferguson, a 35-year-old African American mother from Heidelberg, Mississippi, says she shot and killed an escaped monkey to protect her five children after being warned the animals might carry diseases.
Ferguson said the incident happened early Sunday near her home. Her 16-year-old son woke her after spotting what looked like a monkey outside their yard. Ferguson grabbed her phone and gun, stepped outside, and saw the animal about 60 feet away.
Local residents had been cautioned that the monkeys could be dangerous, prompting Ferguson to act quickly. “I did what any other mother would do to protect her children,” she said, according to WLBT. “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 later confirmed that a homeowner had killed one of the escaped monkeys. State wildlife officials took custody of the animal. Ferguson, a professional chef, said she had called police before shooting and was advised to monitor the monkey. Still, she worried it might threaten another child if it escaped.
“If it attacked somebody’s kid, and I could have stopped it, that would be a lot on me,” said Ferguson. “It’s kind of scary and dangerous that they are running around, and people have kids playing in their yards.”
Officials identified the monkeys as Rhesus macaques, one of the most commonly studied animals in medical research. They had been housed at the Tulane University National Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana but were not owned or transported by the university.
The crash that released the animals happened Tuesday on Interstate 59, north of Heidelberg. Out of 21 monkeys, 13 were recovered and delivered to their destination, five were killed during the search, and three remained missing until Sunday.
Although Tulane officials confirmed the monkeys were free of disease, the sheriff said they were still aggressive and needed to be “neutralized.” Wildlife officers and deputies had been searching for them since the crash.
The escape followed a similar incident last year in South Carolina, when 43 Rhesus macaques got loose from a research facility after an employee failed to secure an enclosure.