Mississippi Mother Shoots Escaped Monkey to Protect Her Children After Truck Crash
HEIDELBERG, MISSISSIPPI (November 3, 2025)
A quiet Mississippi town was shaken this week after a local mother fatally shot a rhesus monkey that escaped from an overturned truck carrying 21 laboratory animals. The incident has drawn national attention and raised questions about the safety of transporting research animals through residential areas.
According to local authorities, the truck overturned along Interstate 59 near Heidelberg, Mississippi, on October 28. Several monkeys fled into nearby woods after the crash, prompting an intensive search by wildlife officials.
Days later, one of the animals appeared in the yard of Jessica Bond Ferguson, a mother of five who lives close to the accident site. Ferguson told reporters she fired at the monkey when it came too close to her children.
“I did what any other mother would do to protect her children,” she said. “It was terrifying not knowing if it carried diseases or what it might do.”
The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the shooting, saying Ferguson contacted authorities before the incident. Wildlife officers later collected the dead monkey and continue searching for any remaining escapees.
Confusion Over the Monkeys’ Origin
Initial reports suggested the animals might have been used for medical research and could carry infectious diseases such as herpes B or hepatitis C. However, a statement from a Mississippi university linked to the transport clarified that the monkeys had not been exposed to any infectious agents and posed no known health threat.
Still, the images of primates wandering rural Mississippi sparked alarm across the region and on social media. Officials say several monkeys have been safely recovered, though it remains unclear how many are still missing.
Broader Concerns About Animal Transport
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is investigating the crash and the conditions under which the animals were being moved. Animal rights advocates have renewed calls for stricter oversight of the transport of research primates, noting that rural communities are often left to deal with the consequences of such accidents.
For residents of the Bahamas and the wider Caribbean, where wildlife–human encounters are familiar but research-animal escapes are rare, the Mississippi incident highlights the tension between scientific progress and public safety.
As Ferguson’s story continues to make headlines, she insists she has no regrets.
“I wish it hadn’t happened,” she said. “But as a mother, my first duty is to keep my children safe.”
It’s not a good day for me Bahama Drama. My son in Jamaica have been missing for 2 days now from hurricane Melissa. And somehow I feel like it’s my fault. You see many years ago when he was living with me in Nassau and going to CC Sweeting he told the other students when I came to pick him up from school that he didn’t know me and I wasn’t his father.
And that stuck with me even until this very day now that he’s 26 years old. That summer I sent him to Jamaica to visit his Mommy and I never allowed him back. As far as I was concerned, he was no longer my son just like he said in front of all those school children many years ago.
For him to say that with me standing right there and him running away from me at the same time broke something internally inside me must be.
My heart not only broke but my mindset followed at that moment. Because before that my only purpose was to make sure that my son was straight. And that anything that he needed for school home or whatever he got it no matter how much hard work I had to put in to work on a shitty ass job.
I spent years scraping for this boy and that was the gratitude he had handed me that afternoon. My throat instantly became swollen and sore. I couldn’t swallow.
My heart only thumped deep diver beats. He murdered his own father in cold blood that day.
And his no good Mommy was probably somewhere in Jamaica making another pickaninny.
I never came back for him that afternoon and however he got home that day, I didn’t even ask, because I didn’t give a fuck anymore!
I didn’t have any love in my heart for him anymore, my veins were dead. A heart was why he was able to injure me in the first place I thought to myself. The next couple of months with him still living with me only replayed like a movie in my mind, like a looping movie of the same scenes over and over and over again.
I now hated him and found everything that he said or he did from that day on, a big problem for me. That baby talk shit was dead. I made him speak up like a man when he’s talking to me, letting him know straight up I ain’t with that baby talk shit ma nigga.
I let him know that he was gonna have to start finding a way to pay for his own school shit and all of the things that he needed for school because I was no longer running a fucking soup kitchen or a homeless shelter for teenage bums.
So he started going down to SuperValu to bag groceries after school coming home late and tired after his shift, I still didn’t give a shit about him.
And when ever his Mommy would call from Jamaica for him I’d cuss her the fuck out, to the point that she stopped calling.
I didn’t keep a steady relationship or hung onto my job much longer after that, or any other.
I started drinking and smoking and hanging out with my old neighborhood buddies again and the next thing you know, I got arrested and charged for jooking this dude up around the corner from where my son’s Mommy brother still lives. I do 6 months in Foxhill because dude ended up dropping the charges against me but lose my apartment and my Mommy done do what I asked her to, and that was sending my son over to Jamaica for the summer so he wouldn’t be a burden on her.
The truth was, I didn’t want to get out of jail and see someone that I didn’t like. I hated him that much.
Over the years he gained a Jamaican accent which made it even more easier for me to see him as a stranger to me. He begged me over the years to send for him a few times I promised him that I would in my dead fatherless heart of mine, with poison in my lies it brought me delight knowing that I was making him false promises and telling him boldfaced lies that I had no intentions of fulfilling.
It felt like a kinda revenge to me at the time.
But before hurricane Melissa was even a threat yet to Jamaica my son had asked me could I please send him a plane ticket to get out of the way of the hurricane. Again I had some kind of flashback, thinking way back to when he had once said that I wasn’t his father, came back into my mind, like if it had just happened yesterday, I could even see all of the school children standing around wide eyed looking as if I’m some kind of kidnapper or pervert trying to abduct a child, and finally him running away!
I told him over the phone, yeah I’ll send you a ticket but you have to give me all your information because I don’t have it anymore. With no real intentions to move a finger. To me it was a bunch of small talk to a total stranger Bahama Drama.
He gave me all the information that I needed to buy him that ticket, and he asked. Daddy when is the latest time do you think you’ll have the time to pay for my ticket?
I told him later on this afternoon when I come from the bank, knowing got dam well I wasn’t going to no damn bank for no grown ass man, probably with kids by now, he probably doesn’t even take care of or claim, I thought to myself.
I fucking hated him all freshly again, just like before. But this time I was more mature and diplomatic with it.
I told him, I’ll call you when it done okay Troy.
He said okay Daddy thanks, I can’t wait to see you again, I love you!
I said yeah, I love you too!
Everyday from last week, I ducked every single call from him.
I haven’t been following the news like everyone else has but I found out yesterday that the hurricane Melissa actually hit Jamaica as a Cat5 and my heart stopped pushing blood.
My ears actually started working again. And I started gathering all the information that I could about what it was doing to Jamaica and what part, is it the part where my son lives or what I researched.
I started calling around to people who knows his Mommy number, I called his cell number no answer.
I pop down the street to her brother’s house, then he tells me.
Nobody seen Troy in 2 days my Lord.
My stomach break’s down, I pass a little silent gas. Knowing diarrhea isn’t far behind. So I fast talk with him got all the numbers my belly breaking down was going to allow me too and I speed back home to the bathroom and shit all over the toilet seat.
Nasty shit everywhere!
I’m only human so this ain’t even meant to be seen as funny for Christ sakes!
I shower, clean up my Miss and start dialing numbers.
But knowing my son he’s a survivor and might just not be answering his phone because he’s trying to make me worry myself to death as a form of payback for me not sending him that ticket!
So I’m gonna just wait until everything is really over in Jamaica, watch the news and see. Cause I haven’t heard of anyone dying over there because of Melissa yet!
So I’m not gonna stress myself out over this boy.
Page Reply:
You do know that children are childish right? So your son was doing what every child is wired to do at their age, and that’s think childish. Adults don’t get to use that excuse Sir. Ijs…
Did you know that Satan knows who’s actually loyal to God & who’s not? Be loyal through it all, because if Satan knows, what do you think about God’s knowing!
