A marriage proposal landed one Alabama man in Tennessee in the slammer. Sometimes people just can't take no for an answer. This has to be one of the most bizarre stories I've come across.
Police arrested 26-year-old Dustin Brian Burgett after he tried to threaten a store clerk to marry him. They charged him with two counts of aggravated assault and placed him on a $40,000 bond.
Burgett returned to a Lawrence County store and allegedly threatened to do bodily harm to a teenage store clerk if she didn't marry him, according to WKRN. Sheriff John Myers said the suspect bought some items at the store but later returned with a marriage proposal and a shotgun. We've heard of shotgun weddings but not shotgun proposals.
"She proceeds to tell this guy, 'Hey look, I've got a boyfriend and I've got a family and I'm not interested,'" Myers said. It happened while the clerk and her co-worker were outside. Burgett drove up in his truck with his hand behind his back.
Marriage Proposal Leads To Arrest
"He gets out of his truck and he's got one of his hands behind his back. That automatically puts the clerks on alert. Behind his back is a bouquet of flowers, and he asks this girl again to marry him and she tells him again, 'No. I mean, I've got a family, I've got a boyfriend, I'm not interested,'" the sheriff explained. "That's when he pulls a knife from the front of his overalls and makes a statement to the store clerks that if he doesn't get married today by somebody, somebody's going to die, as he's looking and pointing this knife at this 19-year-old store clerk."
The clerk and her co-worker locked themselves in the bathroom and altered authorities. Police found $3,600 in cash as well as a loaded shotgun. They also found wedding rings in a box and flowers. Burgett told them, "The wedding band's in my chest pocket there. I don't mean no wrong."
The clerk had no idea who Burgett was outside of seeing him at the store a couple of times.
"He was talking crazy, saying that his mom was dying and that he had to take her to the hospital and that he needed to marry somebody," she recalled."He had flowers behind his back. If he didn't get married, somebody was going to die. And he whipped out a knife.
"I was going to ask the girl to marry me," Burgett said. "I don't think that's the right thing to do. Maybe she doesn't want to."
