Will you marry me, he asked? No, she said. So he killed her, police say

She broke his heart.

He broke her neck, police say.

Christopher R. Tucker of Albany Township, Penn., faces murder and criminal homicide charges in the death of 19-year-old Tara Serino. He is accused of proposing to her and then killing her when she said no.

Her funeral was Wednesday, two days before her 20th birthday.

Upper Macungie Police told NBC10 in Philadelphia that when Tucker proposed, Serino told him she was seeing other men.

Many media accounts claim that she made an off-hand comment that Tucker should kill her.

Authorities say he snapped.

Tucker strangled the teenager, then brutally assaulted her in his home. He poked her eyes out, snapped her neck and hit her with a hatchet until she was dead, court documents reveal.

He wrapped up her dead body in a rug, left it at his home and fled to Illinois, acording to The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa.

Authorities arrested him on Halloween at a truck stop after he broke into a farmer’s combine, the Morning Call reported. The farmer was inside the combine at the time.

Back home in Pennsylvania, the fathers of both Tucker and Serino were looking for them, according to WPVI in Philadelphia.

Court documents show that Serino’s father reported her missing on Nov. 1. She had told her father two days before she was going out with Tucker.

“Both fathers were looking. The father of the victim was looking for her and reported her missing. The father of the defendant had actually brought some of the stuff back to the victim’s father,” Berks County District Attorney John Adams told WPVI.

Police in Illinois notified Tucker’s father that his son was in the hospital. That’s where Tucker described to detectives what he had done to Serino.

Two Pennsylvania State Troopers were sent to his home where they found Serino’s body wrapped up in Tucker’s bedroom.

Her injuries matched the attack Tucker had described. Police also discovered that Tucker had used a 25-pound weight plate to attack her.

Reviewing court records, local media found that Tucker had been arrested just days before the killing for drunken-driving and having marijuana and another controlled substance on him.

At her funeral Wednesday, friends and loved ones described Serino as “full of wonder and enthusiasm” and “honestly kind,” WPVI reported.

Tucker, meanwhile, is in jail in Champagne County, Ill. awaiting extradition to Pennsylvania where he will be formally arraigned on a handful of charges, including first-degree and third-degree murder.

This story was originally published November 9, 2017 at 10:44 AM with the headline "Will you marry me, he asked? No, she said. So he killed her, police say."