10/31/2014 AT 10:15 AM EDT
Kaci Hickox and her boyfriend stepped out of their home Thursday morning and rode away on mountain bikes, followed by a state police cruiser.
It was the second time Hickox, who is halfway into the 21-day incubation period, broke quarantine. She left her home Wednesday evening briefly to speak to reporters, even shaking a hand that was offered to her. Hickox contends there's no need for quarantine because she's showing no symptoms. She's also tested negative for the deadly disease.
"I really hope that we can work things out amicably and continue to negotiate," she said Thursday morning while riding on a dirt trail.
However, as of Thursday, talks had broken down, with Gov. Paul LePage vowing to use “the full extent of his authority allowable by law” to keep Hickox away from the public.
"I don't want her within three feet of anybody," LePage told WCHS.
"There's a lot of misinformation about how Ebola is transmitted, and I can understand why people are frightened. But their fear is not based on medical facts," Norman Siegel, one of her attorneys, said Wednesday.
Hickox, who treated Ebola patients while volunteering in Sierra Leone with Doctors Without Borders, was the first person forced into New Jersey's mandatory quarantine for people arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport from three West African countries. Hickox spent the weekend in a tent in New Jersey before traveling to the home she shares with her boyfriend, a nursing student at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.
"I'm not willing to stand here and let my civil rights be violated when it's not science-based," she said Wednesday evening.
Word spread quickly around the town of 4,300 residents on the Canadian border. Fort Kent resident Priscilla Staples says some residents are "fearful" of Hickox's presence in the community, but she believes Hickox "has done nothing wrong and she has every right in the world to go for a bike ride."
Siegel said the nurse hopes her fight against the quarantine will help bring an end to misinformation about how the Ebola virus is transmitted.
"She wants to have her voice in the debate about how America handles the Ebola crisis. She has an important voice and perspective," he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment