LEESBURG, Va. — After two days of testimony, the man who shot a 21-year-old YouTuber inside Dulles Town Center on video in April has been found not guilty on two charges of malicious wounding.
The jury found Alan Colie not guilty of aggravated malicious wounding or use of a firearm for aggravated malicious wounding, however, he was found guilty of firing a gun inside the mall. That guilty verdict has been set aside until a hearing to discuss it on October 19.
Colie, a DoorDash driver, was on trial for shooting Tanner Cook, the man behind the YouTube channel “Classified Goons,” at the Dulles Town Center back in April. Colie admitted to shooting Cook when he took the stand Wednesday but claimed it was self-defense.
The case went viral not because there was a shooting inside a mall, but because Cook is known to make prank videos. Cook amassed 55,000 subscribers with an average income of up to $3,000 per month. He said he elicits responses to entertain viewers and called his pranks “comedy content.”
Colie faced three charges, including aggravated malicious wounding, malicious discharge of a firearm within an occupied dwelling, and use of firearm for aggravated malicious wounding. The jury had to weigh different factors including if Colie had malicious intent and had reasonable fear of imminent danger of bodily harm.
Cook was in the courtroom when jurors were shown footage of him getting shot near the stomach – a video that has not yet been made public. Cook’s mother, however, left the courtroom to avoid watching the key piece of evidence in her son’s shooting.
The footage was recorded by one of Cook’s friends, who was helping to record a prank video for Cook’s channel. The video shows Cook holding his phone near Colie’s ear and using Google Translate to play a phrase out loud four times, while Colie backed away.
When he testified, Colie recalled how Cook and his friend approached him from behind and put the phone about 6 inches away from his face. He described feeling confused by the phrase Cook was playing. Colie told the jury the two looked “really cold and angry.” He also acknowledged carrying a gun during work as a way to protect himself after seeing reports of other delivery service drivers being robbed.
“Colie walked into the mall to do his job with no intention of interacting with Tanner Cook. None,” Adam Pouilliard, Colie’s defense attorney, said. "He’s sitting next to his defense attorneys right now. How’s that for a consequence?”
The Commonwealth argued that Cook was never armed, never placed hands on Colie and never posed a threat. They stressed that just because Cook may not seem like a saint or his occupation makes him appear undesirable, that a conviction is warranted.
“We don’t like our personal space invaded, but that does not justify the ability to shoot someone in a public space during an interaction that lasted for only 20 seconds,” Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Eden Holmes said.
The jury began deliberating around 11:30 a.m. Thursday. Shortly after 3:30 p.m., the jury came back saying they were divided and couldn’t come to a resolution. The judge instructed them to continue deliberating and later returned with the not-guilty verdict.
WUSA9 caught up with the Cook family following the verdict. When we asked Tanner Cook how he felt about the outcome, he said it is all up to God.
“I really don’t care, I mean it is what it is,” he said. “It’s God’s plan at the end of the day.”
His mother, Marla Elam, said the family respects the jury and that the Cook family is just thankful Tanner is alive.
“Nothing else matters right now,” she said.
Here’s the video by NBC Washington, apologies that it’s served by Discord
Just another reminder how stupid American laws on weapons are. In every normal country this couldn’t happen because that guy wouldn’t have a gun in the first place. It would have ended in a fight or in the shooter suing the prankster and getting a lot of money while the prankster would be told by court to stop this stupid pranks.
The moment a gun is involved, every single confrontation has a skyrocketing rate of lethality.
Deadly weapons make situations more deadly?
I dunno, doesn’t add up.
Do note that this isn’t an exclusive statement; a knife is also extremely deadly.
Why do you have a crypto wallet address in your comment?
I don’t. The string at the end of my comments is a digital signature which serves as a means to verify that I was the one that posted it, and that it wasn’t modified by an admin, or any other external entity.
How does it verify that?
For more in depth information, I’ll refer you to this Wikipedia article on digital signatures. But, the long and short of it is that I distribute a public key which would be used alongside that signature to verify if that signature was generated by my private key for the content that is contained in the given post.
content-signature:Hdv6ZJpsd8MxqdThHqSL5gs/cQ+AbxhOPdoRYYOyL8Ip4/dA6VM3oWtTvItLLO1x+I8DiS+Al7ay5e4TasdNNvrXh5cFmq7+b/L523/tJTqheCpv4tNDETp2H6FY9tJa0HmtmIv4jskdeAMrV0Rnmf1HoqMjO729mGdi1fGxLKVIszlBc4TUKtwzLOOFqBYR5zJCeRw7hbNydGnFRCcJcKfhTX/ANkRChqmCU8AR8Vnb99IMUnchWosjno/88WyoVZEpp/M06iMhw63wKsLzwfDySES3UbMAQwLOEYYtC3B8Y+ApeySAfUkssQjVy7bQUtiE7t/5eYoOTCOBQMUJpQ==My brother had a gun pulled on him while delivering a pizza. I don’t blame delivery people for arming themselves with the unfamiliar situations they have to put themselves in regularly. So long as the strangers they interact with may be armed it’s just an arms race.
Also, in this specific situation where someone comes up behind you and gets in your face something like a knife would be just as deadly.
I don’t fully understand – are you stating this as a counterargument to allowing citizens to arm themselves?
content-signature:B1AXrZBd/7FJJsrZK3eAstCO4snSAUMFuDO1KjwEAJU3xxtP0d7KJD2oTd9vS/0UHABSsREV9mDuethUyiv+QH++uWOlCvc2jVHOX6Q9UMN2QcAPbJm6hbqGQLMpJNjI2F94IPu8iZa6tnyAsagUQHbx6T8WBAlnv7nl5ukmUfFwtl6CP/lobNteFBlMKXOCRV+mJTbWq02L71ZA6EyfD2EUyLVb1iJ/NoDWOnI9whAoUHRHSOzLldEd/AoQ0/8HjvKsnFT+EAeqh7KEBYaMcKdduA3U2hqaIo5tIUpDOmCG9QGtbJq7m4Oo6Hxt95qxvBuRRiEzQ6rRPmVPsoKIIg==No, the opposite really. If you are delivering things alone to strangers, it makes sense to arm yourself. You are putting yourself in vulnerable position frequently and can’t expect others to be unarmed. Otherwise you’d be the loser in the prisoner’s dilemma a society of guns creates. Things might be different if guns weren’t widespread, but that genie’s out of the bottle.
I don’t own a gun, but I might if I didn’t feel safe in my day-to-day life.
Yeah, instead we get the guy being shot but continuing to do his stupid bullshit. That laws in the US are broken.
I don’t understand your point. Are stating that if the victim didn’t have a gun – meaning that the shooting didn’t happen – then the perpetrator wouldn’t be continuing this behaviour?
content-signature:ZXco0T3+z6ff9K0rbQCt+9w2lDEe4GHy9QuxOgIiJqKWfcGoazURsZea+8i/5DrTIHihOUN4GEY9HlHfzoEQCGLqZaby4yj+t0yUbP08HVgwPi1mV19bbieDKMJeXhNkpDwgqjc8rDcnyMgaPhlAY/W+nS6xWgIcrTMrf9H5LbhtZqIwHvo4kFgUz87mrt21L8rlOpvbiodZrrLx/1mHGXd3cdJJP92W1Z3x7t4E7NjKgstCnyCXtILMpejJkQH4cEPv1pdlHRQdjOrG32ZmyFWWn+LruZW+Xj4Vx5ueu87UupLpCPbTD5FWMGX/HTfBxR5XQs0oRYO8Eh1q8WY2Tg==Yeah. I mean, this happened in a mall? With hundreds of people around? It seems like the best outcome would be: person having their personal space invaded tells the “perp” to stop it. Files lawsuit, judge orders to cease their invasive harassment against other people.
The whole being shot just shows how quick to violence and homicide Americans are. It’s like, the solution to everything these days. Dealing with people the past few years in public is pretty dicey, just asking someone not to cut in front of you at the checkout line could potentially lead to a mass shooting these days.
The best outcome, sure, but not a guaranteed outcome.
That’s not really how the law works. If It is already illegal to harass people, then the court order would essentially be along the lines of “I order you to stop doing illegal things!”.
It isn’t entirely fair to group unprovoked violence with self-defence. There is an argument that could be made for proportional response in defence, but this is a separate issue.
I agree that easy access to find isn’t great but this is a text book case of self defense.
Are you referring to a shooting in self-defence by a law-abiding gun owner? If so, then yes, if said law-abiding citizen didn’t have a gun, then, by modus tollens, they wouldn’t be able to use a gun in self-defence.
You state “ended in a fight” as if that implies that the total damage imparted on both parties would be less overall. You completely miss the fact that physical violence can quite easily end fatally.
At any rate, wouldn’t a victim defending themself successfully, efficiently, and likely without bodily harm to themself be preferential to the possibility of a violent and bloody physical beating with odds likely not in the victim’s favor?
I mean you lack the legal option of having a means to defend yourself.
Are you replying to the following?
content-signature:MPvnKfx103YjaEk1xAXkZad4N/0g8T26skCzlxub/U2C7YlNL3ycnBO+T9uLoaM1EJ93KjJxWFjisQOWL6sw6znCkte+v0HXg6SP1KewjQGthXuEwCkFNvbmgNMs/yB9UCnqHQA94fdb1NKgi6NpZqh/Ja6cn6B/fsLAyOtMSAEtmYJWG/Dqa3I9p5GdHXUlMsWpKpZrd4oQ8qxDIDZPYgApZPhNKLHJijZK0lrsj91HbSapgCPY9gGVwT758MnEQ4MdgmywfwFlXxhzPU3qDLu6J/tqjNAPNiPdadE9VN9H/Oj5C2I235zLgmk9TCdMoNz1ZwjpXfg566OZxsjWog==In every other country if three people decide it’d be funny to beat you to death, you actually have zero you can do about it.
You take your robbery and beating, stabbing or slashing, accept the Belfast smile when they decide to give you one, and hope they stop while you’re still able to survive.
What are the homicide rates in the US compared to those countries?
What’s the ratio of random attackers to friends and family getting killed?
Why are you burying yourself in macho fantasies?
I have no macho fantasies. More randos could beat me to death with their hands than the ones who cannot. You may have a bit of martial arts training and fantasies of obliterating some muggers with your hands but I have no such illusions. I’ve been the victim of crimes like this and consider myself lucky as I was utterly helpless at the time and survived. So fuck off with that “just run away or fight” nonsense you believe from watching too many movies where good guys always take damage differently from bad guys.
Read it again.
Read what? You said I’m buried in macho fantasies.
My owning guns has no bearing on domestic violence happening in a different household.
You know yourself and know you are the kind of person who might use a gun on your own family. I know myself and have no such violent tendencies. The broader statistics may be relevant to the question of whether you disarm everyone wholesale, but are irrelevant to one individual’s personal decision whether or not they will defend their own lives given existing legal constraints.
This is 10/10 mental gymnastics, gold medal
Your arguments are so informative and full of insight, you should publish to a journal.
thx bb
Ah yes all those stabbing and knife deaths in European countries like people don’t get stabbed more in the us…
You realize these things still happen a lot more in america right?
I don’t dispute that.
Only question is: what is your plan for when 3 dudes surround you and the first one who is much larger than you makes every signal that he’s about to dominate you?
Who is out to get you bro, what did you do
You clearly grew up more privileged than me, and lived a more sheltered experience, if you truly don’t know that criminals work in groups.
Bored teens with no futures do exceptionally dumb shit, like attack people for fun. They pick the weakest person they see, and in NYC every year there are at least one or two stories where the attacks turn into homicides.
Mate my brother was a drug dealer, half my friends growing up were in gangs, and at no point did I wish I had a gun or any other weapon except in sad moments as a power fantasy.
I don’t know if you mean that one would lack the means, or that they are simply prohibited by law to defend themself, but, in either case, it is false in that there do exist countries in which one can defend themself, or defend themself and carry the means to defend themeself. For example, let’s look at Canada (do not interpret this as legal advice):
So we can see that one is allowed to defend themself. Things do get a little more trick when we are talking about the means to defend oneself. Canada’s criminal code defines a “weapon”, as follows:
and then further states
However, there are some loopholes in this. As long as one states that they are not carrying an item with the purpose of causing harm to another, and that such reasoning could be reasonably justified, given the context, one could, for example, carry a knife. Carrying a firearm, however, is significantly more complicated, and difficult.
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