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.

  • sholomo@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I find it really interesting how quick Americans are to shoot. Like any minor inconvenience and you all justify shooting and killing someone. I understand self-defense, but shooting someone for something like this I find it so ridiculous. Especially when seeing comments in other news like the guy who killed a black guy for knocking on his door, or the guy who shot teenagers who were at the wrong house, then it’s all “we have such a gun problem” but here it’s a circlejerk of “he was coming at him WITH A PHONE and was TALLER THAN HIM, what was he supposed to do, NOT SHOOT HIM??”

      • sholomo@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I’m not taking about the news, I’m talking about the comments. the guy above said that America is a scary county. I’m talking about how when something like this happens ppl justify shooting instead of less deadly use of self defense.

          • sholomo@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            good points, it’s really weird as nonamerican seeing so many comments and upvotes from people justifying shooting someone just because they felt a bit threatened. Comments saying that less deadly use of force are met with downvotes.

            And I’m not sure why you’re coming at me for, I very clearly wrote that comments in this post are really pro use of deadly self defense, and how they try to justify it

              • Instigate@aussie.zone
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                1 year ago

                While I agree with a lot of what you’ve said, I take issue with this point:

                A suicidal person is going to wind up dead, gun or not

                I work with a lot of suicide survivors and I can tell you for a fact that a lot of people (I’d argue the vast majority) who attempt suicide but survive are not guaranteed to die by suicide later. Oftentimes an attempted suicide is in reaction to an event or circumstances, and once those are resolved the suicidality abates. Removing guns from the equation reduces the chances of completing a suicide, and therefore increases the chances of a suicidal person receiving the mental health care they need after an attempt.

              • braxy29@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                okay, i was with you for the first couple of paragraphs. but it’s worth pointing out

                a) people with access to guns are significantly more likely to find success in suicide attempts, and reducing access to lethal means does make a difference.

                b) even big cities are, on the whole, safer than a lot of people imagine. i say this as an american in a massive city, in a state with very liberal gun laws. but when you have millions of people in one place, statistically speaking you are going to have more crime. i don’t think most american cities are some kind of purge-like shithole, they’re mostly comprised of ordinary people doing their thing.

                edit - formatting, spelling

                  • braxy29@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    that we’re talking about suicidal people is not irrelevant in considering that guns contribute to elevated rates of death. most people who make a suicide attempt do so within a relatively short time of the impulse to act. the accessibility of something which is likely to be very effective and quick in enabling them to complete the act with lower likelihood that they will be able to seek help if they have second thoughts means more success for those attempts. and while i’m not necessarily a “ban all guns” type it’s worth understanding that guns contribute measurably to mortality in this way.

                    as for rest, i’m a big fan of nuance, but data can illuminate our understanding of complex issues and things we might keep in mind when looking for solutions.

                    edit - a typo

    • wolfkin@mastodon.social
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      1 year ago

      @sholomo @Lightor I think you’re wrong but It’s an interesting argument. Why is this shooting seen by many as more reasonable than the guy who show the kid knocking on his door. For my money it’s the justifiable confusion. A kid knocks on your door and your first response is to shoot doesn’t make sense. You had room and barriers to make decisions. In this case the dude was in his face and wouldn’t back off. IMO they’re incomparably different. But yeah guns are a problem in both cases.

      • sholomo@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        it’s true that the events are not truly comparable, but this also happened in a food court where there’s people around, not in a dark alley

        • wolfkin@mastodon.social
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          1 year ago

          @sholomo That’s a perfectly fair point. Now while I do not support how he reacted and it’s one of the many reasons, I don’t think people should be allowed to have guns willy-nilly, I will maintain that. There is a huge difference between something unexpected showing up in your doorstep and a man intensely yelling at you in your personal space. Extremely close doing things you are not able to comprehend who refuses to back away after repeated attempts to step back.

          • wolfkin@mastodon.social
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            1 year ago

            @sholomo in my opinion his reaction was correct. It’s his owning a gun that was wrong. The problem is when you have a gun you’re supposed to use it. And I mean that in the prescriptive sense, not a descriptive sense. There’s no point in having a gun and then still resorting to fists. If you’re in danger and you do not know what’s going on, you reach for the strongest weapon you have around you and you use it to defend yourself. Govt should prevent that weapon frm being 2 deadly. Guns r 2 deadly.

            • sholomo@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              oh yeah I agree that the YouTuber was stupid as fuck, the other guy was on his right to defend himself, but yeah a gun is too deadly for the situation

    • Lightor@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Let’s not paint a massive country with a single brush stroke. Not everyone is shooting everyone over getting cut in line.