Mississippi Woman Fatally Shoots Escaped Research Monkey

Eyewitnesses filmed monkeys that escaped after a truck overturned in Mississippi.

sarah

Nov 3, 2025 - 19:17

Mississippi Woman Fatally Shoots Escaped Research Monkey

One of the monkeys that escaped after a truck overturned in Mississippi last week was shot and killed 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 could spread diseases. “I did what any mother would do to protect her children,” she told The Associated Press.

The monkeys were being transported to the Tulane University National Biomedical Research Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, for scientific research purposes and escaped during transport last weekend.

University officials said the monkeys did not carry “any infectious agents.”

The 35-year-old mother of five said her 16-year-old son told her about a monkey behind their house in Mississippi.

She then got out of bed, grabbed her gun and cell phone, and spotted the animal about 60 feet (18 meters) away.

“I shot at it and it just stood there, and I shot again, and it kind of backed up a little bit and that’s when it fell,” she told the AP.

The Jasper County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that a local resident had an encounter with a monkey and said the animal was in the custody of the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks.

There is considerable confusion surrounding the incident, including how many monkeys were being transported, who owned them, and how the truck overturned.

Tulane University said the animals “were not being transported by Tulane, were not owned by Tulane, and were not in Tulane’s custody.”

It added that although Tulane “did not transport or own these non-human primates at the time of the incident,” it still sent “a team of animal care experts” to assist authorities. A video shared online showed monkeys roaming in tall grass along a Mississippi highway. Wooden crates marked "Live Animals" were scattered along the roadside.

The monkeys being transported were rhesus macaques, a species commonly used in biomedical research, particularly in studies of infectious diseases and vaccine development.

Three of the primates that escaped after the truck overturned in the US are still missing.