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.
This is the problem with US gun laws; so he's carrying legally, gets in a situation where self defense is warranted, and does...
I really wouldn't want to live in a place where the only options for self defense are to either back away, or shoot someone.
What? This was a fucking 6ft 5in giant of an attacker. I suppose I'm happy that you never seem to have taken a sucker punch, or any serious strike to anywhere vital, but that sort of shit is a momentary action for the attacker that can easily leave the victim reeling and unable to react for literal minutes after.
The attacker doesn't need a gun to permanently injure you, and only needs a moment to strike you when you attempt to do any of the options you crossed out as things that should have been attempted first. Plus it's a hell of a lot easier to say any of those options you listed than successfully do them (besides crying for help of fucking course), especially when you have no training in self defense, you're already intensely off balance, confused, scared, and tense because some random stranger is acting confusingly aggresive towards you.
You go to push him away. He elbows you in the face and proceeds to beat the ever loving shit out of you as you flail to block your vital organs, crying for help where you'll be lucky if anyone responds at all, let alone fast enough to do anything to actually help you before you end up with broken bones and permanent brain damage (it doesn't take much to do if someone's going apeshit on your head once you're already on the ground).
The unfortunate reality is that any threat to your physical safety by someone larger or stronger than yourself is inherently an existential threat to you unless you rely on your attacker not having lethal intent. You've been accosted by a complete stranger. You don't know shit about their intent. You can only hope. This is true regardless of how each party is armed, guns, knives, or only with their fists. If they truly want to kill you and you have no way to equalize their advantage over you, you're probably just fucked.
You can argue that people shouldn't be allowed to carry guns and should be restricted to non-lethal options, but given the situation and the tools this guy had available, the gun was the only option that would guarantee his safety against unknown intent.
I don't think it's reasonable to ask someone to risk their own life just so they might allow an unknown aggressor with unknown intent the opportunity to live at the potential cost of their own life. The only way to know if you are in lethal danger in this situation is in retrospect. After the altercation is over, and the victim is potentially dead.
The aggressor is the one that chose to initiate the aggression. If the situation is a question of whether the victim ot the aggressor has more of a right to live, and it is a binary choice (as it has every potential to be), I don't think it's a hard call.
I wish that it didn't have to be reduced to a kill or be killed judgement, but humans are far more fucking fragile than any of us like to admit or think about, and again we can only know if the attacker had lethal intent in retrospect.
The shooter gave the attacker plenty of moments:
According to your logic, he could've died 7 times that day.
And only then pulled out a gun. 🤦
That's assinine. If he was so unsure about the threat level, then should have tried to run away and hide from the start; they weren't out in the desert FFS.
Instead, he acted all sure of his own superiority with his gun, waiting for an excuse to use it. That's closer to premeditated intent to kill, rather than self defense.