Skylar Mack Cayman Islands coronavirus breach. Georgia student & athlete boyfriend, Vanjae Ramgeet sentenced 4 months jail over failure to obey local quarantine requirements.
An Georgia student and her watersports-athlete boyfriend have been sentenced to four months by a Cayman Islands court after she slipped out of her wristband monitor to watch him compete at a local race instead of quarantining after arriving from the U.S. amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Skylar Mack, 18, and her boyfriend, Cayman Islands-based competitive Jet Skier, Vanjae Ramgeet were jailed immediately after their sentences were handed down on Tuesday. An island judge issued the four-month term after overturning a previous sentence of 40 hours of community service and a $2,600 fine each, according to a report from the Cayman News Service.
‘This was as flagrant a breach as could be imagined,’ Grand Court Justice Roger Chapple told the court, according to the Cayman Compass. ‘It was borne of selfishness and arrogance.’
He also handed down the same punishment for Ramgeet, a local man who the jurist said should have been smarter.
Mack allegedly violated the quarantine requirements just two days after arriving at the Cayman Islands in late November. After asking government officials to loosen a wristband monitor that she said was too tight, she allegedly slipped out of the equipment and went to Ramgeet’s Jet Ski competition for hours, according to the reports.
‘This was entirely deliberate and planned’
The appeal to make the couple’s punishment more stringent comes after the boyfriend and girlfriend both planned the breach, while also both interacting with members of the public for more than seven hours, and during that time neither of them wearing a face mask nor practicing social distancing.
‘This was entirely deliberate and planned, as evidenced by her desire to switch her wristband the day before to a looser one that she was then able to remove,’ Chapple said Tuesday.
Mack, a University of Georgia medical student, will be deported as soon as she’s served the required time, the reports state, and court officials asked that she be banned from returning to the country until the border reopens.
But there’s more.
Hate mail & death threats
The incident has since led to Mack receiving hate mail, including death threats. The matter also affected her father, who is also a professional jet-ski rider and has now lost sponsorship because of it according to the Cayman Compass.
Also affected was the boyfriend, with Ramgeet stripped of his victory at a recent jet-ski event, with prize money/medals/trophy made to be returned. The athlete was also required to write a formal apology to the Cayman Islands Watercraft Association, which has banned him from riding in the first few races at the start of the next season.
