Man Stages Robbery in Convenience Store to Propose to His Girlfriend

A young woman who believed she and her boyfriend were the victims of an armed robbery was stunned to learn the entire ordeal was actually an elaborate ruse her beau had concocted to pop the question.

Ray Giuliano and his then-girlfriend were shopping at a convenience store in Boston, New York, a town in Erie County, when something happening at the cash register caught their eye.

Surveillance camera footage showed as a man pulled what appeared to be a gun on the store clerk, who announced they were being robbed.

The robber then left, but burst back into the store to herd the couple and clerk to the back. He then can be seen reaching ominously into his bag before handing something to Giuliano. 

Giuliano then got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend, which left her asking, “are you serious?” 

"I was going for scared with a happy moment afterwards. I wasn’t going for terrified," he told Inside Edition.

The supposed robber and store clerk were all in on the proposal, he said.

"We closed down the store, we waited for everyone to get out," Giuliano said. "We notified the police this was going on. We had a prop gun, it wasn’t a real gun, so, we tried to do it as safe as possible."

As for his now-fiance's reaction?

"She called me a bonehead," he said.

Still, she said yes, and Giuliano tried to make amends with a second, more conventional proposal on a bridge in Manhattan’s Central Park.

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