Dubious fugitive Jenny D’Ubios breaches ‘fortress’
A runaway conspiracy theorist has embarrassed the McGowan government and put a dent in what it calls ‘Fortress WA’ after she escaped from a Perth hotel.
A runaway conspiracy theorist – the aptly named Jenny D’Ubios – has embarrassed the McGowan government and put a dent in what it calls “Fortress WA”.
The 49-year-old Ms D’Ubios, who goes by the name Jennifer Gonzalez on Facebook, claims to have studied metaphysics at Byron Bay.
Among the more benign theories she has shared with her social media followers is that a $70 tuning fork dipped in water “rejuvenates the cells in your body”. She says coronavirus is not real.
On Saturday, a week after landing in Perth from Madrid, Ms D’Ubios exposed the fallibility of the McGowan government’s strict hotel quarantine regime with alarming ease.
She told police and private security guards at the hotel she was going to pack up her things and leave. She posted her intentions on Facebook.
Then she did it. CCTV recorded her in the heart of the city’s business district, pulling a suitcase on wheels. She walked out the front door of the Pan Pacific hotel, her arms heavy with bags. When police arrived, the guard following had lost sight of her.
Police found her 12 hours later at a hospital in Rockingham, half an hour by car south of Perth.
“I chose to walk into a hospital and ask them to initiate on my behalf as the situation for my health and mental wellbeing,” she posted on social media.
By Sunday there was panic at the top levels of the WA government. For 268 days, there had been no community transmission of coronavirus in the state. Then came relief: Ms D’Ubios agreed to a COVID test and it was negative.
A review will examine the debacle, including why Ms D’Ubios was not sent to a dedicated high-security hotel for people who might try to skip quarantine.
There were signs she was a flight risk. As early as December 20, the day after she began hotel quarantine, Ms D’Ubios had a phone conversation with a WA Health Department nurse that could have been a warning.
“I made it really clear to her that what she’s doing is unlawful,” Ms D’Ubios said in a video account of the conversation posted to Facebook.
But this was not the first time a nurse from the WA Health Department had encountered resistance and distrust from a person locked in hotel quarantine.
Tears and screaming are reasonably common. So are threats to leave, according to WA Health Minister Roger Cook. In Perth, quarantine hotel rooms are small and most windows do not open. Even people who consider themselves robust tend to struggle.
Ms D’Ubios is now out of hotel quarantine and in police custody.
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