Woman’s quarantine act caught on CCTV

The wild dash from the mandatory hotel stay was caught on CCTV and sparked a hunt for the interstate traveller.Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said the woman arrived from Sydney on July 1 and was transported to the Cairns Pacific International to complete two weeks in quarantine.It was not known exactly how long the escapee was roaming in the community but she was last spoken to in her room on Sunday evening and was discovered missing on Monday afternoon.“It appears this person scaled two balconies, gone down an outside staircase and has damaged a door to escape,” Mr Gollschewski told reporters on Tuesday morning.Officers sifted through CCTV footage and eventually found the woman at her mother’s residence in Cairns.The incident was still being investigated after the woman entered quarantine at the city watch-house facing a number of charges “including criminal charges”, Mr Gollschewski said.The 32-year-old had returned a negative Covid-19 test at the beginning of her stay in quarantine and was awaiting further tests after being taken into custody.The deputy commissioner said a number of quarantined guests had attempted to flee but this woman was the first to successfully evade officers and enter the community.He said the woman “kicked in” a door to escape the facility so she was “fairly motivated”.News of the dramatic escape comes after a person was fined $1300 for breaching quarantine at a hotel in Brisbane city.The top cop provided minimal details about the breach on Monday but said the person was “found in the stairwell” of the Four Points hotel in the CBD.“We have monitoring systems and officers on site so that person had previously been spoken to for their behaviour and persisted with it so they’ve been fined fairly heavily,” Mr Gollschewski told reporters on Monday.In June, a 29-year-old man attempted to flee the same Cairns hotel quarantine facility by scaling down a balcony but he was caught by police after injuring his leg plunging from a balcony.It was alleged the interstate traveller attempted to scale the outside of the hotel before tumbling from the building.