The household of an 18-year-old faculty scholar who broke the Cayman Islands’ coronavirus legal guidelines on a visit final month has pleaded for her launch from jail forward of a listening to on Tuesday earlier than a panel of judges who will determine whether or not her enchantment can proceed.
“She cries, she needs to return residence,” the scholar’s grandmother, Jeanne Mack, mentioned on NBC’s “At the moment” present on Monday. “She is aware of she made a mistake. She owns as much as that, however she’s fairly hysterical proper now.”
Skylar Mack and her boyfriend, Vanjae Ramgeet, 24, have been sentenced to 4 months in jail after violating the Cayman Island’s required 14-day quarantine interval for guests.
In late November, together with her semester at Mercer College in Georgia full, Ms. Mack flew to the Cayman Islands to look at her boyfriend compete within the islands’ Jet Ski racing nationwide championship.
When she arrived, nevertheless, there was an issue.
She acquired there on a Friday; the championship was on Sunday. And per the nation’s legal guidelines, she was required to stay in her lodge room for 14 days earlier than going anyplace else on the islands.
To elude the restrictions, Ms. Mack, after receiving a detrimental coronavirus check, slipped an digital monitoring bracelet from her wrist and escaped to a seashore on Grand Cayman’s South Sound, the place she noticed Mr. Ramgeet win first place.
However the authorities came upon, and Ms. Mack and Mr. Ramgeet have been sentenced final week to 4 months in jail for the quarantine breach.
“This was as flagrant a breach as might be imagined,” Justice Roger Chapple mentioned in courtroom in the course of the sentencing, in line with the Cayman Compass, a information web site within the Cayman Islands. “It was borne of selfishness and conceitedness.”
The islands, a British territory of practically 65,000 residents, have reported 316 infections and two deaths, as of Monday.
Ms. Mack’s family members in suburban Atlanta scrambled to drag collectively letters from family and friends testifying to her character in an effort to get the sentence overturned on enchantment, mentioned Jeanne Mack, 68.
Jeanne Mack additionally wrote to President Trump for assist. She obtained a response from the Workplace of Presidential Correspondence final week stating that her correspondence had been forwarded “to the suitable federal company for additional motion.”
Justice Chapple mentioned final week in courtroom that “the gravity of the breach was such that the one applicable sentence would have been one in every of fast imprisonment,” in line with the Cayman Compass.
The household and Skylar, a junior pre-med scholar, make no illusions about what occurred, her grandmother mentioned: What she did was unsuitable.
“I’ll do all the pieces to get you residence, and once I get you right here, I’m going to kick your butt,” Jeanne Mack mentioned. “We’re not saying, ‘poor, harmless Skylar.’ We’re merely saying the punishment doesn’t meet the crime.”
Skylar Mack pleaded responsible to breaking the quarantine guidelines and was initially sentenced to 40 hours of neighborhood service and a high quality. However the punishment was elevated after the prosecutor appealed.
Jeanne Mack mentioned that if the panel of judges on Tuesday decides that her enchantment can proceed, then the household hopes that she can be launched on bond pending the enchantment.