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.
You can drop the “not a proponent of violence” charade.
You can think that violence is abhorrent and also understand that it might be the quickest, simplest way to settle a matter. Adults can think two things at once. Crazy, I know.
The latter implies being a proponent. Let’s not move goal posts because we think we’re the “good guy”. Hint: you’re not.
Airtight logic, bud
Pull your head out of your ass
“Violence is abhorrent, except when it’s against people I don’t like”, got it.
That’s not what he said.
That’s actually exactly what was said. I don’t condone violence except when I condone violence based on my definition of when I condone violence.
And you’re all lapping it up. Bravo.
Edit: and for the record my original comment didn’t even criticize the latter part (the condition or when its condoned). What I am very loudly questioning is the opening statement. Violence is being condoned. The OP is a proponent of violence. Just own it. Don’t be pussies.
Here, I won’t be a pussy.
Violence is never the answer, until it is.
Some people don’t know when to stop. What boundaries are. The prankster here found this guy’s boundaries. The victim felt fear, and reacted in his way. Do I get to draw the line in the sand where violence is the right answer? No. Judges, Juries, and lawmakers do.
Do I feel personally that this gentleman defended himself correctly? It’s a thin line, but yes. As I said in another comment the guy probably ended up in high crime areas on a regular basis and a gun might have been necessary for those situations. So that’s the defense he had on him. It’s not like we all carry a selection of weapons and deterrents that we can choose from depending on where we are at any given time. We carry what works for the worst situation we encounter.
As a delivery driver myself I sympathize because I have a feeling this wasn’t this guys first bad interaction with another individual. If he continues driving, it most certainly won’t be his last.
Try the second paragraph again
Correction, when it’s against others willing to commit violence, it’s often the only answer.
Example: Neville Chamberlain, and Winston Churchill
We used to call that doublethink. Now we call it the right-wing.
No, it’s called nuance lol
Dogmatic much?
This doesn’t actually say anything. You just don’t like what was said.
No, we all think you’re dumb for dragging idiotic politics into this.
Some of us think with a rational mind and know it’s not all black and white out there.
Speaking in absolutes in this world is the worst thing you can do.
This is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve heard all day. Congrats. I don’t even have to point out how ironic it is for calling me dumb and then saying this. Bravo.
pat pat
You may call it right wing, the rest of the world calls it intelligence.
If you cannot view an issue from multiple perspectives, then I’d start worrying less about right vs left and start reading more.
The original post was proposing a hypocritical view. I.e. saying violence as bad while also endorsing it.
Doublethink is hypocrisy. And as long as you acknowledge that, then fine. Whatever. Sometimes it’s necessary to be a hypocrite. But if you’re always a hypocrite, you’re probably right-wing. Which was my point.
Holding contradictory views is not intelligence. It’s a learned skill to discard the cognitive dissonance inherent in hypocrisy.
Violence is not preferable, but it’s the appropriate response at times.
In this case, it’s very understandable the guy reacted the way he did. Not preferable, but understandable. He was being harassed, and had stated that the person needed to stop. They didn’t. They actively pursued him. He also was approached from behind by someone else involved. He made an accurate non-lethal shot with a lethal weapon. Good on him. Maybe now he’ll carry some pepper spray, too, so he has more options.
Nah. You can be anti-violence, pro-violence, or understand that violence is acceptable only as a means to achieving a desired result, oftentimes as a last resort.
Both the first and third options are not proponents of violence, but the third understands it is a necessity to achieve their goals at times. This is literally heavily discussed now as fascists try to paint anti-fascists as the violent ones when anti-fascists merely understand violence as the means to a goal in this case and not their normal path to a goal.
americans are so scared, shoot first and think later
Yeah, we live in a scary country. It’s not unfounded.
Whenever I’m in America I have to remind myself that it’s possible that people around me have guns in public. Scary country indeed.
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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??”
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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.
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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
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@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.
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
@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.
@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.
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
Let’s not paint a massive country with a single brush stroke. Not everyone is shooting everyone over getting cut in line.