Southeast Queensland lockdown: Man fined three times, taken into custody for breaching rules

A man has broken lockdown rules near Toowoomba so frequently, police have taken him into custody. And he isn’t the only resident breaching the strict directions from the chief health officer.

LOCKYER Valley police were so frustrated by a man’s repeated breaches of the Covid lockdown that they arrested and held him in custody.

The man has been fined three times in three days for breaching the chief health officer’s directions.

On Tuesday he was caught in public without a face mask and fined $1300.

He was again picked up about 11am on Wednesday in Gatton, en route to give some cash to a mate.

Darling Downs City Patrol Acting Inspector Greg Wheeler said this was deemed non-essential travel so police hit the man with a second $1300 fine.

On Thursday police intercepted the man a third time and held him in custody to face Ipswich Magistrates Court on Friday.

A/Insp Wheeler said the man was one of several people fined for breaching the chief health officer’s directions in the past week.

They included a Gatton woman who was travelling to give her daughter a mobile phone and a Mt Sylvia man intercepted en route to Gladstone for a motorbike tournament.

“Anyone who knowingly breaches the directions will be fined,” he said.

The southeast Queensland lockdown affects 11 local government areas, including the Lockyer Valley, Somerset and Scenic Rim.

It is slated to run until Sunday.

Police will conduct a mix of rolling and static intercepts at key thoroughfares in a bid to keep the Covid Delta strain east of the Great Dividing Range

This includes on the Warrego Highway at Withcott and at Cunningham’s Gap on the Cunningham Highway.

Toowoomba Police will also conduct foot patrols of the major shopping centres as well bars and clubs.