An American college student who broke the mandatory 14-day quarantine protocol for visitors in the Cayman Islands received a reduced jail sentence after her lawyer filed an appeal arguing that the punishment was “particularly harsh.”
A spokesperson for the Cayman Islands Court of Appeal told NBC News in an email that the jail time for Skylar Mack, 18, and her boyfriend, Vanjae Ramgeet, 24, was cut from four to two months on Tuesday.
The lawyer for the couple said the two were incredibly sorry for their actions.
“They both expressed genuine remorse, a genuine appreciation for the seriousness of what had taken place, a genuine appeal for some form of forgiveness,” Jonathan Hughes said.
Mack is a pre-med student from Georgia who visited her boyfriend in the Cayman Islands for a jet-skiing competition. Mack, who did not quarantine for the mandatory two weeks, said she only isolated for two days and tested negative for Covid-19 before attending her boyfriend’s competition.
Jeanne Mack, Skylar’s grandmother, told the “Today" show on Monday that her granddaughter just wanted to return home.
“She knows she made a mistake, she owns up to that, but she’s pretty hysterical right now,” Jeanne said.
Hughes said laws in the Cayman Islands allow people who serve 60 percent of their sentence that is less than a year to be released on conditional release. The couple was expected to be released on Jan. 19 or 20, according to Hughes.
According to the government’s Covid-19 dashboard, the Cayman Islands, a British overseas territory with almost 65,000 people, has reported 316 cases and 2 deaths.
