Central Park lovers get engaged, mugged
NEW YORK - For richer, for poorer? It'll have to be for poorer after Luke Jacunski and his girlfriend were robbed at gunpoint just seconds after he proposed.
Jacunski got on one knee and popped the question to his girlfriend of six months, Mami Nagase, in a romantic spot at a gazebo in Central Park on Saturday night. She had just agreed to marry him when, they said, a gunman jumped from the bushes and yelled, "Give me your money and get on the ground!"
As Jacunski, 30, and Nagase, 24, got on the ground, he was able to slip the engagement ring off her finger and hide it in his pocket.
The robber took a Rolex watch from Nagase and $125 from Jacunski, who had planned to use it to pay for a romantic dinner at a French restaurant. The robber then ran away.
Nagase, an artist from Japan, and Jacunski, a musician from Cincinnati, spent the next several hours at a police station looking at mug shots and sharing potato chips for dinner. They said they still plan to get married.
"It makes for a pretty good story for our anniversary," Jacunski said.
He said the night could have been much worse: After he proposed, Nagase could have said no.
