One of the escaped monkeys in Mississippi was shot and killed Sunday morning by a mom who told the Associated Press she feared for the safety of her children.

The AP reports Jessica Bond Ferguson — a mother-of-five living in Heidelberg, Mississippi — was alerted to a monkey running in the yard outside their home by her 16-year-old son this morning … and, when she looked, she says the monkey was just 60 feet from her home.

Ferguson told the outlet she fired her gun … “I did what any other mother would do to protect her children. I shot at it and it just stood there, and I shot again, and he backed up and that’s when he fell.”

As you know … a truck overturned in late October that was carrying Rhesus monkeys from Tulane National Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana — leading to 21 monkeys escpaing the vehicle.

13 were coralled by authorities, five were shot on sight after a supervisor mistakenly claimed the monkeys were infected with COVID, herpes, and hepatitis C — authorities later clarified they weren’t — but three escaped into the wild.