'They're psychotic': Teenagers recount moment they tried to catch rampaging baboons

Witnesses have described the terrifying moment three baboons escaped from a Sydney hospital during a trip for one of the primates to get a vasectomy.

One woman told 2GB her daughter at Prince Alfred Hospital in Camperdown told her the animals were “psychotic” as dozens of people at the busy inner west hospital watched on in disbelief.

A group of students revealed they went in search of the primates as they roamed the facility for roughly an hour after breaking loose.

“I was eating dinner and my phone buzzed. It was a message from a mate who said there were some baboons on the loose,” 18-year-old Cody Carr told The Daily Telegraph.

“We got a bag and just started running around looking for them.”

The three baboons were eventually tranquillised and captured by staff from Taronga Zoo after police cornered them with a tarpaulin with the help of bystanders.

“I just helped wrangle them,” the woman’s daughter added.

Another stunned witness spoke to 2GB moments after spotting the baboons.

“I just happened to gaze out at the car park... and there were three baboons in the car park,” he said.

“I’m deadset serious they even had shiny red bottoms … (they were) running around the carpark.”

Footage emerged on social media of the three baboons darting across the grounds of the hospital as a man stands and points at them.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard told AAP there was a lock failure either on the truck or crate that was transporting a 15-year-old male and two females.

"The three baboons decided to take a bit of a look around RPA grounds," he said on Tuesday.

"They didn't know what to do nor did the people around them."

Mr Hazzard insisted the baboons were not being transported for research purposes from a colony in western Sydney and the male was at the facility for a vasectomy.

"It had been decided the male needed to have a vasectomy to continue to move with his female troop and not keep producing babies," he said.

"If he had been kept fertile he would have had to moved from the family he knows."

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play.