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Pet Monkey of Texas Special Teams Coachās Girlfriend Allegedly Bites Child on Halloween
The Texas Longhornsā underwhelming football season took an unexpected turn on Monday night.
A Houston-based photographer named Tom Campbell tweeted that he had heard from a āreliable sourceā that a pet monkey belonging to Texas special teams coach Jeff Banks had bitten a child on Halloween.
Usually a rumor as patently absurd as this one coming from someone with no history of breaking college football news and no clear background in journalism wouldnāt be worthy of attention. Except Banksās girlfriend decided she should hop on Twitter and confirm elements of the story in an attempt to clear his name.
You see, the monkey doesnāt belong to Banks. It belongs to his girlfriend, Danielle Thomas. The animal is a white-faced capuchin named Gia with her own Instagram page, who used to perform alongside Thomas when she was a pole dancer known as the Pole Assassin (who was featured on The Jerry Springer Show).
After Campbellās tweet had started going viral, Thomas rushed to defend herself. She explained that she had set up a haunted house in her yard for Halloween and one of the kids ventured beyond the course of the display and to the area where the monkey is housed. Thomas also confirmed that she was told a child had been bitten but described the bite as āsmallā [sic throughout]:
āI 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,ā she tweeted before deleting her Twitter account. āneither 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 !ā
āA 11 /12 year old child should know better then to enter someone yard without permission and old enough to also follow the rules,ā she added. āThe rules were when u get to the gate turn around and come back out for candy every other parent and child did so !ā
āPeople lie so much it's ridiculous ! Stop believing everything u hear ! And more of what u see ! SMH !ā another tweet read.
The icing on the cake was a video Thomas posted walking through her backyard explaining the route the child took to the monkeyās cage and how it was impossible for the child to be bitten without sticking their arm in the cage.
If Thomasās aim was to clear Banksās name, it might have worked. Thereās no indication that Banks was involved in the situation at all. Still, itās a tricky situation for a guy who was recently linked to the Washington State head coaching job to find himself in.
