Leigh Van Bryan, 26, and Emily Bunting, 24, were planning a holiday in America when Bryan posted a seemingly innocuous message on Twitter, tweeting to a friend: “Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America”.
Unluckily for Irish bartender Bryan, America’s Department of Homeland spotted the tweet and decided he was a potential terrorist.
Their fears were reinforced when they discovered another tweet which appeared to pinpoint Bryan as a highly dangerous character.
“3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA p*ssing people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!” he wrote in a blood-curdling reference to Family Guy.
With a staggering lapse of humour, the Department of Homeland Security took the tweets literally and detained both Bryan and Bunting at LA airport.
According to the couple, their bags were searched for the spades and shovels with which they would presumably have dug up Marilyn Monroe.
“I almost burst out laughing when they asked me if I was going to be Leigh’s lookout while he dug up Marilyn Monroe. I couldn’t believe it because it was a quote from the comedy Family Guy which is an American show,” Bunting told the Daily Mail.
Bryan said that the airport’s anti-terror cops were convinced he was on a mission to destroy the country.
“The Homeland Security agents were treating me like some kind of terrorist. I kept saying they had got the wrong meaning from my tweet but they just told me ‘You’ve really f***ed up with that tweet, boy’,” he said.
After spending a night in jail, the couple were sent back to the UK.
Bryan received a charge sheet, outlining why he was barred from entering America:
“Mr Bryan confirmed that he had posted on his Tweeter [sic] website account that he was coming to the United States to dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe. Also on his tweeter account Mr Bryan posted that he was coming to destroy America.”
Be warned.
