The American teen who was jailed for breaching quarantine orders while traveling to the Cayman Islands is speaking out for the first time since returning to the U.S.
Skylar Mack, 18, a student from Loganville, Georgia, and her boyfriend Vanjae Ramgeet, 24, a professional jet-ski racer from the Cayman Islands, werereleased from prison on Jan. 15, the Cayman Islands government confirmed to PEOPLE. The pair served approximately one month of what was originally a four-month sentence, later reduced to two.
Mack was arrested after knowingly violating the islands' mandatory COVID quarantine rules in order to watch Ramgeet compete in a jet ski event.
Speaking toABC News in an exclusive interview, Mack admitted, “The anger, the disappointment — it’s all justified.” She added, “I deserved it. I was like, ‘You know what? I made this mistake, and it sucks, but you did it to yourself.”
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
If someone were to have gotten sick from her quarantine breach, Mack said she “definitely” would’ve “never been able to live with myself.” “Knowing that I could have been the reason that somebody could even just been sick eats me up,” she said.
“It was a selfish decision,” said Mack later in the interview. “There’s no reason that I could give you to grant me a second chance. I don’t expect anybody to ever forgive me. But I would like for them to at least let me be able to show them that I did learn from it.”
Both she and Ramgeet — who was charged with aiding and abetting his girlfriend — were placed in a government facility for a 14-day quarantine, which ended on Dec. 15, and pleaded guilty to their offenses. They were initially sentenced to a $2,600 fine and 40 hours of community service each.
On Dec. 15, the island’s Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Patrick Moran, decided their sentence did not fit the severity of their crimes, and sentenced them instead to four months behind bars. Mack and Ramgeet’s attorneys successfully argued for more lenient sentences in the British territory’s Court of Appeal on Dec. 22,dropping their sentences down to two months each.
On Jan. 7, the Cayman Islands government releaseda statementsharing that Mack and Ramgeet would be released from prison early, as the island’s Prison Service approved the pair’s “applications for pre-discharge leave, under the terms of section 30 (2) of Prisons Law.”
As information about thecoronavirus pandemicrapidly changes, PEOPLE is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For the latest on COVID-19, readers are encouraged to use online resources from theCDC,WHOandlocal public health departments.PEOPLE has partnered with GoFundMeto raise money for the COVID-19 Relief Fund, a GoFundMe.org fundraiser to support everything from frontline responders to families in need, as well as organizations helping communities. For more information or to donate, clickhere.
source: people.com
