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Danville, PA – Michelle Fallon is living a nightmare. And, she’s ready to put that nightmare on record.

The Danville woman is now experiencing symptoms, believed to be related to her close encounter with wild monkeys, when the trailer they were riding in collided with a dump truck and unloaded their cages all over Route 54 on Friday afternoon. (The monkeys were destined for an unidentified Centers for Disease Control lab, in the Midwest.)

The following day, Fallon developed a cough and something that resembled “pink-eye.” And, by Sunday, she was visiting the Geisinger Medical Center emergency room, where infectious disease doctors were consulted. Fallon has since received her first (of 4) preventative rabies shots; as well as a prescription for a 14-day course of Valacyclovir.

The stay-at-home mom, who shared that she was fully vaccinated and received her booster, was also tested for Covid, but the results at the ER were negative.

Fallon is still processing the sequence of events that unfolded on Friday. She pulled over to check on the condition of the accident victims, but she said they were more concerned about press coverage of the incident.

The driver of the truck hauling the monkeys, identified in a press release from PA State Police, as Cody M. Brooks, 31, of Keystone Heights, FL even went so far as to put his hand in the camera of a local Press-Enterprise reporter. “He was very, very upset,” said Fallon. “He was in a panic.” Brooks passenger, Daniel G. Adkins, 59, of Florahome, FL required transport to Geisinger Medical Center for an injury.

Many questions remain unanswered for Fallon, like what are these monkeys possibly infected with? Why wasn’t the vehicle marked indicating it was carrying potentially bio-hazardous contents? Why were the three monkeys that fled instantly euthanized and not captured? What did the CDC tell her doctor to test for?

“This has been a nightmare,” she said. “I had no idea doing a good deed like this could get me a rabies shot and put me in this situation.”

Fallon was simply showing compassion; she told the trailer driver that he’s “in Danville, we take care of people.” Now, she’s the one needing care.

Fallon said there were other motorists who stopped at the scene. Fallon could not identify those people but suspected some might also have been put at risk. The email from PA DOH indicated that efforts would be made to track them down with the assistance of police.

Those who believe they may have had contact with the monkeys are asked, per the CDC letter, to seek medical attention and contact PA DOH at (717) 787-3350.

The three monkeys who fled from the scene were euthanized. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has since issued a statement on this incident, indicating that the organization has filed a complaint with the US Department of Agriculture’s Director of Animal Welfare Operations, asking him to investigate the treatment of these monkeys. They report that the “USDA has now confirmed that it’s investigating.”

Kristen Nordlund, a spokesperson with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an email Saturday evening that all 100 of the cynomolgus macaque monkeys had since been accounted for. Three were dead after being euthanized.

The email did not elaborate on why the three were euthanized or how all came to be accounted for. But Nordlund said those euthanized were done so humanely according to American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines.

The shipment of monkeys was en route to a CDC-approved quarantine facility after arriving Friday morning at New York’s Kennedy Airport from Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island nation, police said. The Atlanta-based CDC said the agency was providing “technical assistance” to state police in Pennsylvania.

The collision occured Friday on a state highway near an Interstate 80 exit in Pennsylvania’s Montour County, Trooper Andrea Pelachick told The Daily Item newspaper of Sunbury.

The location of the quarantine facility and the type of research for which the monkeys were apparently destined weren’t clear, but cynomolgus monkeys are often used in medical studies.

A 2015 paper posted on the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information referred to them as the most widely used primate in preclinical toxicology studies.

Earlier, police had earlier urged people not to look for or capture any monkey, with troopers tweeting: “Anyone who sees or locates the monkey is asked not to approach, attempt to catch, or come in contact with the monkey. Please call 911 immediately.”

Trooper Lauren Lesher had said the concern was “due to it not being a domesticated animal and them being in an unknown territory. It is hard to say how they would react to a human approaching them.”

Lesher said state police secured the scene for the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the CDC.

The condition of the motorists involved in the crash wasn’t clear, nor was it immediately known whether any citations were issued.

A crash witness, Michelle Fallon, told the Press Enterprise newspaper of Bloomsburg that she spoke with the pickup driver and a passenger after the crash. The driver appeared to be disoriented, and the passenger thought he might have injured his legs, she said.

Crates littered the road Friday as troopers searched for monkeys, rifles in hand. Valley Township firefighters used thermal imaging to try to locate the animals, and a helicopter also assisted, the Press Enterprise newspaper of Bloomsburg reported.

The pickup was heading west on I-80 when it got off at the Danville exit and then immediately tried to get back on, driving across the other lane, the newspaper reported.

Fallon told the Press Enterprise that she was behind the pickup when it was hit on the passenger side by the dump truck, tearing off the front panel of the trailer and sending more than a dozen crates tumbling out.

She and another motorist who stopped to help were standing near the scene when the other driver said he thought he saw a cat run across the road, Fallon said.

Fallon peeked into a crate and saw a small monkey looking back at her, she told the newspaper.

“They’re monkeys,” she told the other motorist.

Driver who stopped to help when truck carrying 100 lab monkeys crashed in Pennsylvania and put her hand in one of the cages says she now has a cough and pink eye after one of the macaques HISSED in her face

• Woman who stopped to help monkeys in truck crash is now feeling unwell
• Michelle Fallon, from Danville near Scranton, was directly behind the truck
• Fallon said the day following the accident she developed a cough and pink-eye
• She has begun a course of antiviral drugs and treatment to prevent rabies 
• The last of the four escaped monkeys was accounted for by late Saturday 
• One of the cynomolgus macaques, which are also known as crab-eating or long-tailed macaques, was found in a tree
• Pennsylvania residents had been warned not to engage a crab-eating macaque that escaped from a truck carrying 100 of them to a lab
• Crates with live monkeys inside were strewn across State Route 54 in Danville, 130 miles from Philadelphia, after the crash 
• A witness said he thought he saw a cat run across the road before making the shocking realization that it was actually a fleeing primate

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.