The internet is blowing up over a bizarre YouTube prank gone wrong that ended in court after a delivery driver shot a YouTuber.
In April, YouTube prankster, Tanner Cook, 21, who runs the Classified Goons channel, was shot by 31-year-old Alan Colie, a Door Dash delivery driver, in a shopping center in Washington, Virginia.
The incident occurred after Cook harassed Colie in the food court of the Dulles Towne Center mall, as he picked up a food order, following him around while playing bizarre audio from his phone.
The phone plays the phrase “Hey dips—t, quit thinking about my twinkle” multiple times using a Google Translate app.
Colie backs away from Cook, telling him to stop three times and trying to knock the phone away from his face before pulling out a gun and shooting Cook in the lower left chest.
The shooting started a panic, with shoppers fleeing what they feared was a mass shooting.
Last week, a jury found Colie not guilty of aggravated malicious wounding, siding with his claim that he acted in self-defense.
Social media also came out in support of Colie, who has a license to carry a concealed weapon, blasting Cook for harassing a stranger.
Colie’s defense lawyer, Adam Pouilliard, said that his client felt menaced by the 6 foot, 4 inch tall Cook during the confrontation, which was designed to provoke a reaction to draw viewers to Cook’s YouTube channel.
Pouilliard said that by pulling such stunts, Cook “is trying to confuse people to post videos. He’s not worried that he’s scaring people. He keeps doing this.”
However, prosecutor Eden Holmes argued that Colie’s shooting of Cook didn’t meet the conditions of self-defense, and that the prank was bizarre but not threatening.
She said that the law required that Colie reasonably feared he was in imminent danger of bodily harm, and required that he shouldn’t have used any more force than was necessary.
The jury earlier sent a note to the judge saying that they couldn’t agree on whether to convict him.
After being sent back for further deliberations, they came down on the side of Colie.
The jury was split on two lesser firearms charges, acquitting him on the charge of malicious discharge a but convicting him of shooting into an occupied dwelling, for which he could get up to 10 years in prison.
Cook’s Classified Goons channel, which has 56,000 subscribers, features pranks like pretending to vomit on Uber drivers and following unsuspecting customers through department stores.
Cook said he earns $2,000-3,000 a month from the channel.
