Mother shoots, kills escaped research monkey to ‘protect’ her children – National

Jessica Bond Ferguson said her 16-year-old son alerted her early Sunday that he had seen a monkey running in the yard outside their home near Heidelberg, Miss.

That’s when Bond Ferguson said she got out of her bed, grabbed her firearm and cellphone and stepped outside, where she saw the monkey about 18 metres away.

The Mississippi mother, who has five children ranging in age from four to 16, said she and other residents had been warned that the escaped monkeys carried diseases, so she fired her gun.

“I did what any other mother would do to protect her children,” Bond Ferguson 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.”

Before Bond Ferguson left the house, she said she had called the police and was told to keep an eye on the monkey. But she said she worried that if the animal got away, it would threaten children at another house.

“If it attacked somebody’s kid, and I could have stopped it, that would be a lot on me,” said the 35-year-old professional chef. “It’s kind of scary and dangerous that they are running around, and people have kids playing in their yards.”

The Jasper County Sheriff’s Department confirmed in a social media post on Facebook that a homeowner found one of the monkeys on their property Sunday morning.

“Ms (Mississippi) Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks responded and the monkey is now in their possession. We have no other details at the moment,” the post added.

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Jasper County Sheriff Randy Johnson told People magazine that Bond Ferguson saw the monkey sitting on the porch of an abandoned house next to hers.

“And she shot it. She said she feared for the safety of her kids and animals that she had, and she shot it,” Johnson added.

The sheriff said he believes two monkeys remain missing.

The Rhesus monkeys had been housed at the Tulane University National Biomedical Research Center in New Orleans, La., 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 Tuesday on Interstate 59 north of Heidelberg. Of the 21 monkeys in the truck, 13 were found at the scene of the accident and arrived at their original destination last week, according to Tulane. Another five were killed in the hunt for them and three remained on the loose before Sunday.

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 harbouring various diseases. Johnson said the monkeys still needed to be “neutralized” because of their aggressive nature.

Rhesus monkeys typically weigh about 16 pounds and are among the most medically studied animals on the planet.

The search comes about one year after 43 Rhesus macaques escaped from a South Carolina compound that breeds them for medical research because an employee didn’t fully lock an enclosure.

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South Carolina town still on lockdown as 18 of 43 escaped monkeys remain on the lam

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The primates, who were all “very young” females weighing approximately six or seven pounds, were never used for testing. Police said they confirmed with Alpha Genesis that the animals were too young to carry disease.

In an interview with CBS News, Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard called the escape “frustrating.”

“It’s really like follow-the-leader. You see one go and the others go,” Westergaard said of the earlier escape. “It was a group of 50 and seven stayed behind and 43 bolted out the door.”

—With files from The Associated Press

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