A Georgia student has been ordered to spend four months in jail in Cayman Islands for breaking the British territory’s COVID-19 lockdown rules, according to several reports.
“Skylar Mack and her boyfriend, Cayman Islands-based competitive Jet Skier Vanjae Ramgeet were jailed immediately after their sentences were handed down on Tuesday,” Fox News said last week.
Mack is an 18-year-old student at Mercer University in Macon.
According to Cayman News Service, the four month sentence was handed down after the government appealed an initial punishment of 40 hours of community service and a $2600 fine for both Mack and Ramgeet. The government argued that the former punishment was too lenient, and a judge agreed.
“This was as flagrant a breach as could be imagined; it was borne of selfishness and arrogance,” Justice Roger Chapple reportedly said, adding that “the gravity of the breach was such that the only appropriate sentence would have been one of immediate imprisonment.”
In September, the island nation began issuing tracking bracelets to tourists in order to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Mack is accused of duping the government into issuing her a looser tracking bracelet by claiming the original one she was given was too tight. She then allegedly slipped out of the second bracelet, and went to watch Ragmeet compete in a Jet Ski event.
Now, Mack’s grandmother is asking the White House for assistance.
“She’s terrified. She called me last night, she couldn’t sleep,” Jeanne Mack reportedly told Fox News.
Mack wrote a letter to President Donald J. Trump, and received a response saying that the “White House staff reviewed your correspondence and forwarded it to the appropriate Federal agency for further action.”
The elder Mack claimed that the government in the Cayman Islands is making an example out of her granddaughter, and that her granddaughter was the first person jailed on the island for breaking COVID-19 protocols.
“They needed to make a statement,” Mack said Friday in an appearance on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom. “Their government is accusing her of causing major anxiety of everybody that was on the island but it’s because they’re not telling them that she was negative – she does not have the virus, she never has had the virus.”
– – –
Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Tennessee Star and the Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Skylar Mack” by Skylar Mack and Vanjae Ramgeet is by Vanjae Ramgeet / Facebook.
