Bell County Constable Thomas Prado pulled over Cody Henderson for running a stop sign at South 33rd Street and West Avenue L.
He asked Henderson, 26, to get out of his truck and questioned him about fidgeting in his seat.
“Vehicle stops are the most dangerous thing we do,” Prado said.
Prado thought Henderson might be hiding something, so he put some pink handcuffs around his wrists and asked to search the truck.
When the search was complete and he found nothing incriminating Prado began to ask Henderson more questions and found that Henderson was indeed hiding something in his left front pants pocket - a shiny new engagement ring for his girlfriend, Erin Mays.
As it turned out, the engagement ring did more than convince Ms. Mays, 25, to marry Henderson - it ended up getting him out of a potential ticket.
Prado was skeptical about Henderson’s story that he ran the stop sign because he was chasing his girlfriend to propose marriage.
Henderson’s story was at least partly true. He had the ring and wanted to propose marriage, but he admitted Wednesday that he had no definite plan for the proposal.
He said he wanted his girlfriend near him on Christmas Eve in the event the right moment came along he could produce the ring.
She had other plans.
Henderson said the couple had a misunderstanding in the morning that had at least something to do with his tardiness in proposing marriage.
And Ms. Mays said she couldn’t wait around for a potential proposal because she still needed to get Henderson some Christmas gifts. It wouldn’t be right for him to be around while she shopped for him.
She took off from Troy to do the shopping and a determined Henderson followed her to Temple with no real plan in place.
Ms. Mays thought she had ditched Henderson when he was pulled over by Prado in the 1800 block of Avenue L. She said she was in a store when Prado called her cell phone and told her that if she didn’t come down and save her boyfriend he was going to jail.
Prado’s dash camera was rolling when Ms. Mays arrived at the scene and Prado removed the handcuffs from her boyfriend’s wrists and stepped backward.
Henderson then got down on a knee, showed her the engagement ring and asked her hand in marriage.
When she said yes, he slipped the ring on her finger, the lights of a patrol car flashing in the background. Prado and another Temple officer who responded to the scene clapped as the couple embraced.
Before the couple could get away, Prado used the handcuffs one more time. This time the couple was handcuffed together to symbolize their pending union. Ms. Mays showed off the ring as the couple stood together in the middle of the street.
“I’m not going to give him a ticket, and he’s not going to jail,” Prado said with a wide grin on his face as he got back into his patrol car.
The couple left smiling, too.
They said they were going to go eat breakfast at a local restaurant and Ms. Mays could be overheard talking about how it was going to be a great Christmas.
