DAVID Butterfield, a freelance photographer, walked out of Kanoa Resort, the government-designated quarantine facility, on Sunday and was arrested Monday in Garapan on charges of obstruction of justice and public nuisance.
After he was detained at the Department of Corrections for a few hours, he was brought back to Kanoa Resort.
Before he was arrested, Butterfield told Variety that he was tested when he arrived at the airport on Tuesday last week and took a second test on the fifth day, Sunday.
“Both results are negative,” he said, adding that he is unvaccinated and that he has recently recovered from Covid-19.
He said he was told that he needed to stay for five more days at Kanoa Resort because he was unvaccinated.
“I don’t have any symptoms,” he said. “There’s no reason for them to keep me there for another week.”
On Sunday evening he said he walked out of his room at Kanoa Resort and went home.
The next day, outside a business establishment in Garapan on Middle Road, a tracking team and police officers told him to return to Kanoa Resort, but he refused. “I will not voluntarily go back there. Arrest me if you have to,” he told the officers.
When they tried to hold his arms he sat on the ground and then lay down, saying: “If I am not under arrest, I refuse to go back to Kanoa Resort.”
DPS spokesman Dre Pangelinan said he will provide additional information as soon as it becomes available.
According to the CNMI Covid-19 Task Force, the penalty for those who violate the mandatory quarantine requirement for arriving travelers is a “maximum of no more than a year imprisonment and/or no more than a $500 fine.”
David Butterfield sent this selfie to Variety while seated in the parking lot of a business establishment in Garapan on Middle Road Monday. He said he told police officers that they needed to arrest him if they wanted him back in quarantine at Kanoa Resort.
