Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

One of three virus-infected monkeys that escaped on a highway in Mississippi this past week was shot and killed by a homeowner who said she feared for her children’s safety.

Jessica Bond Ferguson told authorities that her 16-year-old son walked into their home and told her he thought he spotted one of the primates.

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

The mom, who lives near Heidelberg, Mississippi, with five children aged 4 to 16, first called the police, who told her to keep an eye on the monkey. But she said she worried that if it 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,” Bond Ferguson said.

She said she grabbed her gun and cellphone and went outside, and found the monkey about 60 feet away in the yard.

“I shot at it and it just stood there, and I shot again, and he backed up and that’s when he fell,” she said.

The Jasper County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that a homeowner near Heidelberg found one of the monkeys on her property Sunday morning. The state’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks responded and took the animal away, the sheriff’s department said on Facebook.

Bond Ferguson, a 35-year-old professional chef, was being hailed locally as a hero.

“Ya don’t mess with a Mississippi momma’s young’uns,” Doug Jernigan, of Meridian, Mississippi, commented on Facebook on Nov. 3.

The local community had been on alert since last Tuesday, when a semi-truck carrying 21 monkeys overturned while transporting them from Tulane University to an out-of-state testing facility.

Initial reports said that only one of the monkeys, which were infected with COVID, herpes, and hepatitis C, escaped capture, but that number was increased to three.

The accident happened at about 2 p.m. local time on Interstate 59, about 86 miles east of Jackson, Mississippi, near Heidelberg.

The truck had picked up the Rhesus monkeys from the university’s biomedical research center in New Orleans, Louisiana, which provides primates to scientific research organizations, according to the university’s statement this past week.

Authorities said the truck driver warned them about the “dangerous and aggressive” primates. The monkeys were not infectious, however, according to the university.

Eight of the monkeys were ejected from their cases, of which five were killed and three escaped. Thirteen monkeys from the shipment were taken from the accident scene and arrived at their original destination in Florida this past week.

Two escaped monkeys remain unaccounted for, according to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Parks. Department officers in the area are continuing to search for the monkeys and are asking for the public’s help to find them, a department official told The Epoch Times on Monday.

The monkeys are known to be aggressive, and the public was advised to avoid contact, according to the department.

The Mississippi Highway Patrol said it was investigating the cause of the crash.