BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
Three monkeys escaped into the Pennsylvania countryside after a Keystone Heights man driving a pickup with an enclosed trailer ran into a dump truck near Interstate 80.
Pennsylvania State Police said Cody Brooks, 31, of Keystone Heights was driving the pickup on State Road 54 at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 21.
When attempting a left turn onto the interstate’s on ramp, he hit the dump truck.
The New York Times reported that the pickup and trailer were carrying 100 cynomolgus monkeys, often used in scientific research, to a Florida lab. The report added that the monkeys can cost up to $10,000 each.
The Times said the crash occurred in Montour County, about 150 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
State police said that after the collision, the trailer broke away from the truck and three of the primates escaped from the enclosed trailer.
The state police, local fire fighters and EMS workers, the Pennsylvania Game Commission, PSP Aviation, the Centers for Disease Control and the Pennsylvania Department of Health participated in the search.
Authorities said that by 7:16 p.m. the following day, all three monkeys had been captured and were humanely euthanized.
In an email to a reporter, a CDC representative wrote that the captured monkeys posed a public health risk.
Neither Brooks nor the driver of the dump truck were injured.
The Associated Press reported that Brooks picked up the monkeys from New York’s Kennedy Airport after they arrived from Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean.
Witnesses said Brooks had just exited the Interstate and was attempting to get back on when he cut in front of the dump truck.
