I can think of a few good reasons to fake your own death, some of which I actually wrote about in the past, but for some reason, romantic marriage proposal just isn’t one of them. But it worked for one young man, who staged tragic motorcycle accident with him as the victim in order to ask his girlfriend to marry him.

The man, identified by the media as one Jeffrey Delrio, put a lot of thought into his bizarre marriage proposal, even getting local police officers involved to make his apparent demise even more believable. In a clip that went viral last week, Delrio can be seen lying face down on a street in South Cotobato, Philippines, with police redirecting traffic around the scene of the apparently fatal motorcycle accident, as his girlfriend arrives on a moped. She immediately starts screaming in pain after seeing her beloved laying lifeless on the pavement next to his motorcycle, and police rush to restrain her. Little does she know that this is about to become one of the happiest experiences of her life.

Photo: video screengrab

As one police officer asks the grieving woman if she knows the victim, and another comes in to comfort her, a third traffic policeman turns Jeffrey Delrio’s body and he starts to show signs of life. Before his sobbing girlfriend even has a chance to figure out what is going on, Delrio pulls a small box out of his pocket, gets up on one knee and smilingly asks her to marry him. With no one else available, the confused girlfriend throws herself in the arms of the police officer comforting her and starts crying again, only this time they are tears of joy.

Instead of strangling his prankster boyfriend right then and there, the young woman, identified as Shiela Parayanon, can only slap him on the arm once before hugging him. She then lets him put the engagement ring on her finger, and the crowd starts cheering. She never stops sobbing though.

“It was unusual. People keep thinking of strange ways to make marriage proposals,” said Mark Apura, a friend of the couple and the one who shot the viral video. He added that the couple were both “full of love” after the cruel prank.

 

Not everyone was impressed with the special marriage proposal, though. Some people commented that if they were in Sheila’s place they would have dumped the prankster for this.

“It’s such a strange thing to do. If I was the woman I would have dumped him right there,” one woman commented on the video.

I don’t know what it is with faking one’s death and marriage proposals, but Jeffrey Delrio isn’t the first person to think that the two go well together. Back in 2012, a Russian man pulled a similar stunt to make his girlfriend see that her life would be empty without him. She also accepted his subsequent marriage proposal.