ReportWire

Tag: Heidelberg mississippi

  • Mississippi woman kills escaped monkey fearing for her children’s safety

    [ad_1]

    HEIDELBERG, Miss. — One of the monkeys that escaped last week after a truck overturned on a Mississippi roadway was shot and killed early Sunday by a homeowner who says she feared for the safety of her children.

    Jessica Bond Ferguson said she was alerted early Sunday by her 16-year-old son who said he thought he had seen a monkey running in the yard outside their home near Heidelberg, Mississippi. She got out bed, grabbed her firearm and her cellphone and stepped outside where she saw the monkey about 60 feet (18 meters) away.

    Bond said she and other residents had been warned about the diseases that the escaped monkeys carried so she fired her gun.

    “I did what any other mother would do to protect her children,” Bond, who has five children ranging in age from 4 to 16, 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.”

    The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office confirmed in a social media post that a homeowner had found one of the monkeys on their property Sunday morning but said the office didn’t have any details. The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks took possession of the monkey, the sheriff’s office said.

    The Rhesus monkeys had been housed at the Tulane University National Biomedical Research Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, which routinely provides primates to scientific research organizations, according to the university. In a statement, Tulane University said the monkeys do not belong to the university, and they were not being transported by the university.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Mississippi school homecoming celebrations turn deadly as 6 people are killed in separate shootings

    [ad_1]

    LELAND, Miss. — High school homecoming celebrations in Mississippi ended in gunfire, with two separate shootings on opposite sides of the state Friday night that left at least six people dead and many more injured, authorities said.

    Four of the dead were killed in downtown Leland, after a high school football homecoming game in the Mississippi Delta region on the state’s western edge, a state senator said Saturday.

    About 20 people were injured in the gunfire after people gathered in downtown Leland following the game, state Sen. Derrick Simmons said. Of the 20 wounded, four were in critical condition and flown from a hospital in nearby Greenville to a larger medical center in the state capital city of Jackson, Simmons told The Associated Press.

    Simmons said he was being updated on developments by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office as well as from other law enforcement authorities in the Delta.

    “People were just congregating and having a good time in the downtown of Leland,” Simmons said of the town with a population of fewer than 4,000 people.

    He was told that after the gunfire, the scene was “very chaotic,” as police, sheriff’s deputies and ambulances “responded from all over.”

    “It’s just senseless gun violence,” he said. “What we are experiencing now is just a proliferation of guns just being in circulation.”

    No arrests have been announced, and Simmons said late Saturday morning that he had not heard any information about possible suspects.

    “They are on the ground working and I have all the faith in the world that they will get to the bottom of this,” he said.

    “As the state senator for the area, we are asking any and all individuals who might have any information regarding the horrific shooting last night to come forward and provide whatever information they have,” he added.

    Meanwhile, police in the small Mississippi town of Heidelberg in the eastern part of the state are investigating a shooting during that community’s homecoming weekend that left two people dead.

    Both of them were killed on the school campus Friday night, Heidelberg Police Chief Cornell White said. He declined to say whether the victims were students or provide other information about the crimes.

    “Right now we’ve still got a subject at large, but I can’t give specifics,” White said Saturday morning.

    An 18-year-old man was being sought for questioning in the Heidelberg shooting, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. The sheriff asked that anyone with information contact the police chief or sheriff’s office.

    The shooting in Heidelberg happened on the school campus where the Heidelberg Oilers were playing their homecoming football game Friday night. The town of about 640 residents is about 85 miles (137 kilometers) southeast of the state capital of Jackson.

    It wasn’t clear exactly when the gunfire occurred or how close it was to the stadium. White said he was at the scene Saturday investigating, and that more information might be released in coming days.

    Copyright © 2025 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

    [ad_2]

    AP

    Source link