A Northern Virginia jury has heard testimony from a YouTube prankster who was shot earlier this year by one of his targets. Tanner Cook survived the shot to the chest he received in April at Dulles Town Center in Loudoun County, west of the nation’s capital. Alan Colie, a delivery driver who was the...
A YouTube prankster who was shot by one his targets told jurors Tuesday he had no inkling he had scared or angered the man who fired on him as the prank was recorded.
Tanner Cook, whose “Classified Goons” channel on YouTube has more than 55,000 subscribers, testified nonchalantly about the shooting at start of the trial for 31-year-old Alan Colie, who's charged with aggravated malicious wounding and two firearms counts.
The April 2 shooting at the food court in Dulles Town Center, about 45 minutes west of Washington, D.C., set off a panic as shoppers fled what they feared to be a mass shooting.
Jurors also saw video of the shooting, recorded by Cook's associates. The two interacted for less than 30 seconds. Video shows Cook approaching Colie, a DoorDash driver, as he picked up an order. The 6-foot-5 (1.95-meter-tall) Cook looms over Colie while holding a cellphone about 6 inches (15 centimeters) from Colie's face. The phone broadcasts the phrase “Hey dips—-, quit thinking about my twinkle” multiple times through a Google Translate app.
On the video, Colie says “stop” three different times and tries to back away from Cook, who continues to advance. Colie tries to knock the phone away from his face before pulling out a gun and shooting Cook in the lower left chest.
Cook, 21, testified Tuesday that he tries to confuse the targets of his pranks for the amusement of his online audience. He said he doesn't seek to elicit fear or anger, but acknowledged his targets often react that way.
Asked why he didn't stop the prank despite Colie's repeated requests, Cook said he “almost did” but not because he sensed fear or anger from Colie. He said Colie simply wasn't exhibiting the type of reaction Cook was looking for.
“There was no reaction,” Cook said.
In opening statements, prosecutors urged jurors to set aside the off-putting nature of Cook's pranks.
“It was stupid. It was silly. And you may even think it was offensive,” prosecutor Pamela Jones said. “But that's all it was — a cellphone in the ear that got Tanner shot.”
Defense attorney Tabatha Blake said her client didn't have the benefit of knowing he was a prank victim when he was confronted with Cook's confusing behavior.
She said the prosecution's account of the incident “diminishes how unsettling they were to Mr. Alan Colie at the time they occurred.”
In the video, before the encounter with Colie, Cook and his friends can be heard workshopping the phrase they want to play on the phone. One of the friends urges that it be “short, weird and awkward.”
Cook's “Classified Goons” channel is replete with repellent stunts, like pretending to vomit on Uber drivers and following unsuspecting customers through department stores. At a preliminary hearing, sheriff's deputies testified that they were well aware of Cook and have received calls about previous stunts. Cook acknowledged during cross-examination Tuesday that mall security had tossed him out the day prior to the shooting as he tried to record pranks and that he was trying to avoid security the day he targeted Colie.
Jury selection took an entire day Monday, largely because of publicity the case received in the area. At least one juror said during the selection process that she herself had been a victim of one of Cook's videos.
Cook said he continues to make the videos and earns $2,000 or $3,000 a month. His subscriber base increased from 39,000 before the shooting to 55,000 after.
Hey guys, can we quit with the calls for the deaths of assholes? Lemmy.world's server rules include this:
No links to content supporting, featuring, or promoting hate movements, terrorism, mass violence, or calls to violence.
I've seen that interpreted as including comments that call for someone's death, and I don't want to see this shit get out of hand and draw admin attention.
This particular piece of shit, Tanner Cook, deserves to have his channels shut down, deserves some prison time, and deserves some kind of court order preventing him from pulling stupid "pranks" on anyone ever again. Maybe then he can do something productive with his life, instead of... whatever the fuck it is he's doing right now.
But he can't do that if he's dead.
Being an asshole isn't a capital offense, worthy of summary execution. And the judge in this case apparently agrees.
Nevertheless, it's not unreasonable to want someone to understand that menacing and threatening someone for the lolz can potentially be hazardous to the health of the lolzer. And not always from the the lolzee, there's that video from I think the UK where they are fake robbing someone, and a bystander punched the YouTuber in the head and split open his face.
In the US prison system? Not arguing for the prankster be killed, rather, I think it'd be better if that person be put away until they can be trusted to be mingling with other people again, for as long as it takes. I just doubt they'd be rehabilitated while in the US prison system.
That's even ignoring how pranking fellow inmates would not go over as well as that prankster's YouTube career has gone.
Edit: I forgot a crucial word in my last paragraph.
He wasn't "being an asshole;" he committed an assault. The victim was entirely justified in defending himself.
Also, holy shit, self-defense against an active threat is nothing whatsoever like "summary execution!" There's a huge difference between being forced to make a split-second decision when your own life is perceived to be in danger, and the state deliberately weighing the moral question of whether to kill someone after the situation has passed.
This case is very local to me so I have been following a lot of the discussion about it.
Way too many people are too quick to call for this guy's death or saying that he deserved to get shot. And I just can't disagree more. But I do also get why people are sympathetic to the shooter though, cause he very much is also a victim in all this as well.
This guy though absolutely deserves consequences for these stupid "pranks" and he absolutely should not be earning any kind of money from this. Seriously fuck that guy.