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Skylar Mack, the U.S. college student who was jailed in the Cayman Islands last month for violating coronavirus restrictions, said in an interview on Tuesday that she “deserved it”.
In a segment aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Ms. Mack, 18, apologized for breaking the rules and said any anger at her was justified. She was released on Friday after spending more than a month behind bars.
“I earned it,” she says. “I was like, ‘You know what, I made that mistake, and it sucks, you know, but you made it to yourself.’ ‘
After completing the semester at Mercer University in Georgia in late November, Ms. Mack flew to the Cayman Islands to watch her boyfriend, Vanjae Ramgeet, 24, compete in the Islands National Jet Ski Racing Championship.
She arrived on a Friday and tested negative for the coronavirus. As British soil laws required her to stay in her hotel room for 14 days, Sunday, championship day, she slipped the electronic monitoring bracelet off her wrist. She went to the beach and applauded Mr. Ramgeet who won first place.
In mid-December, a Cayman Islands court sentenced Ms Mack and Mr Ramgeet to four months in prison. After an outcry that the sentence was too harsh, a panel of judges reduced the sentence to two months. His release after just over half that time was in line with what his lawyer, Jonathon Hughes, expected. (Under Cayman Islands law, he says, defendants must serve only 60 percent of their sentence in prison.)
She was one of thousands around the world to be punished for violating quarantine restrictions. Extensive travel restrictions have failed to stop the virus from spreading, with some people considering themselves above the rules.
Ms. Mack told “Good Morning America” that if she had made someone sick, she couldn’t have lived with herself.
Mr Ramgeet was also released on Friday, according to Jeanne Mack, Skylar’s grandmother, who said last month that her granddaughter had struggled in prison.
“It was just one heartbreak after another,” said Jeanne Mack. “She’s bored, she has nothing to do there. She doesn’t want to sit in the common space and watch TV because the Cayman news keeps blasting her photo all over the place. “
Jeanne Mack said she was concerned that her granddaughter’s scholarship at Mercer, where she was a junior pre-med student, could be withdrawn because she missed the first weeks of the semester in prison. A spokesperson for Mercer, Kyle Sears, said Monday that Skylar Mack was not signed up for the spring semester and declined to comment further.
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