Mississippi Woman Kills One of the Escaped Monkeys
This photo provided by Scotty Ray Boyd shows an overturned truck which had been transporting several monkeys, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, in Heidelberg, Miss. (Scotty Ray Boyd via AP)
One of the monkeys that escaped last week after a truck accident in Mississippi was shot and killed early Sunday by a local mother who says she acted to protect her children.
Jessica Bond Ferguson of Heidelberg, Mississippi, told the Associated Press that her 16-year-old son woke her around dawn after spotting what he believed to be a monkey in their yard. “I got out of bed, grabbed my gun and my phone, and went outside,” Ferguson said. “It was about 60 feet away. I did what any other mother would do to protect her children.”
Ferguson, who has five children between the ages of 4 and 16, said residents in the area had been warned the escaped monkeys might carry diseases. “I shot at it and it just stood there,” she said. “I shot again, and he backed up and fell.”
The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office later confirmed in a social media post that a homeowner had found one of the monkeys on their property Sunday morning. The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks took possession of the animal.
The monkeys—Rhesus macaques—had been housed at the Tulane University National Primate Research Center in New Orleans, which supplies primates for scientific studies. Tulane said in a statement that the monkeys did not belong to the university and were not being transported by it.
Jasper County Sheriff Randy Johnson said Tulane officials confirmed the monkeys were not infectious, despite earlier reports from the truck’s occupants claiming they carried dangerous diseases. However, Johnson noted that authorities still needed to “neutralize” the animals due to their aggressive behavior. Tulane later stated that the monkeys had recently undergone health checks confirming they were pathogen-free.
The incident follows growing concerns about animal transport safety after the truck crash that initially released the monkeys into the wild.
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