Yes, you read the headline correctly. While college football is in full swing, attention is being turned to the pet monkey owned by the girlfriend of Texas Longhorns special teams coach Jeff Banks that allegedly bit a child at their home.
According to TMZ, Banks’ girlfriend, Danielle Thomas, owns a white-faced capuchin named Gia, which has her own Instagram page, and used to perform with the animal when she was a dancer known as the Pole Assassin. As cited in several reports, the monkey allegedly attacked a child who had ventured past the confines of the haunted house that the couple was holding in their yard. Gia reportedly had to be pried off the child after the attack.
However, Thomas blames the child for being somewhere they shouldn’t have been and triggering the attack. Before deleting her Twitter account completely, Thomas tweeted about the event and gave her side of the story.
“I had a haunted house on one side gated off/ he had no permission to go pass the gate i had no idea he went in my back yard,” she tweeted. “neither did i know anything about a bite ! Until a doctor of neighborhood told me the treat a small bite. No parent have contacted me about it !”
Thomas also shared a video of her backyard to try and further prove it was the child’s fault for going into Gia’s space.
It’s a very odd situation, but as of right now it does not appear that law enforcement has got involved or if the child’s parents are pressing any charges on Thomas or her pet monkey.
