A Mississippi mother shot and killed one of the monkeys that had escaped from an overturned truck, saying that she feared for her children’s safety.

Jessica Bond Ferguson’s 16-year-old son told his mother he saw a monkey running in their yard on Sunday. So she got out of bed, grabbed her gun and her cellphone.

She saw the monkey about 60 feet from her home, and since she and her neighbors were told that the primates had been carrying diseases, she shot.

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

Bond Ferguson is a mom of five children between the ages of 4 and 16.

She said she called law enforcement before she went outside, but she said she couldn’t take a chance if the monkey attacked someone.

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

The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks took possession of the monkey’s remains, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office said.

The three monkeys that escaped last week were housed at Tulane University National Biomedical Research Center in New Orleans, but were not owned by the university. They were also not being transported by the school.

Twenty-one rhesus monkeys were in the truck when it overturned. Five were killed in the ensuing hunt. Thirteen remained at the scene and eventually arrived at their destination and three escaped.

Despite what people in the area were told about the monkeys being infected with disease, Tulane officials said they were not infectious, but Jasper County Sheriff Randy Johnson said those killed still had to be “neutralized” because they were aggressive.

“We took the appropriate actions after being given that information from the person transporting the monkey,” the office said online.

Two monkeys were still on the loose, the Times-Picayune reported.

Animal activists spoke out about the escape and the use of the animals for biomedical research.

“Terrified monkeys running for their lives into unprotected, populated areas is exactly the spark that could ignite the next pandemic,” People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo said, according to the Times-Picayune.

University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine professor Tony Goldberg responded to Guillermo’s claims, saying that monkeys aren’t likely to start a pandemic, as rhesus macaques live near populated areas in Asia where they interact with people and disease isn’t spread.

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