She Stopped To Help Escaped Lab Monkeys, What Happened Next Is…

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A “good samaritan” woman who pulled over to help out after a truck carrying 100 lab monkeys crashed is concerned she may have picked up an illness after one of the animals spat at her.

Michelle Fallon, from Danville in Pennsylvania, witnessed a pickup truck carrying 100 cynomolgus macaque monkeys collide with a dump truck on a state highway just outside Danville on Friday, January 21.

Fallon was driving along behind the tr

uck when it crashed, leaving numerous animal crates all over the road. Some of the crates smashed and three macaques managed to escape and go on the run but were later captured and euthanized.

More details of the incident from a Daily Mail report:

A woman who stopped to help after a truck carrying 100 lab monkeys crashed in Pennsylvania fears she’s caught an illness after one of the macaques hissed in her face, leaving her with pink eye symptoms.

Michelle Fallon, from Danville near Scranton, was driving directly behind the vehicle when it crashed, throwing animal crates all over the highway and smashing some to pieces.  Three of the macaques escaped and went on the run, but all have since been captured and humanely euthanized. All of the other monkeys – who’d arrived in the US from Mauritius that morning, and were en route to a lab, have been accounted for.

Fallon has now had a rabies shot, and wrote about the symptoms she has since suffered on Facebook – and also told PA Homepage that she’d developed symptoms of pink eye – an inflammation or infection of the eyeball.

Crates holding live monkeys are collected next to the trailer they were being transported in along state Route 54 at the intersection with Interstate 80 near Danville, Pennsylvania on Friday  after a pickup pulling the trailer carrying the monkeys was hit by a dump truck

She said: ‘I was close to the monkeys, I touched the crates, I walked through their feces so I was very close. So I called (a helpline) to inquire, you know, was I safe?

‘Because the monkey did hiss at me and there were feces around, and I did have an open cut, they just want to be precautious.’

Fallon said she got out to help both the driver and the animals in their cages, initially believing them to be cats. When she approached and put her hand on the cage, she says the monkey hissed at her.

The day following the accident, Fallon suddenly developed a cough and pink eye, which became so bad that she had to visit the emergency room at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville.

The piece goes on to say that infectious disease doctors gave her the first of four rabies injections together with some anti-viral drugs.

She said on Facebook that she was monitoring for symptoms of rabies and monkey herpesvirus B.

Watch the video below:

Sources: WayneDupree, Daily Mail