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
I’m glad he got off on the first two charges, but his lawyer argues that the third charge, “shooting in an occupied dwelling” shouldn’t be applicable since it was deemed self defence. The judge will be hearing arguments for this next month.[1]
Also, dude’s now spent 6 months in jail, only to be found not guilty of at least 2/3rds of the charges. Is there any compensation he’ll get for those missing months of his life? He’s already been punished, and yet he’s still presumed innocent.
It is certainly a weird conclusion. You CAN defend yourself. You CAN defend yourself with a gun. You CANNOT defend yourself with a gun indoors?
More that the nature of the indoors location had an increased likelihood of hitting a innocent bystander.
Maybe you’re more justified in somebody if it’s a 2-on-1 situation and you feel like your life is threatened, but pull out a gun and start blasting and you also put the lives of anyone within a certain distance around your target in danger.
Given the lack of apparent weapons on the “assailants”, drawing on them might have been sufficient to disengage and assess without actually needing to fire the weapon at all
Doesn’t that infringe everyone’s right in the building not to get shot while shopping?
That’s why in most places only hollow point bullets are legal for self defence. They are designed to mushroom out and break up when they hit something. This makes them ideal self defence rounds for 2 reasons. They have a ton more stopping power against an unarmored tarket (odds are your mugger isn’t wearing kevlar). Aditionally they usually don’t really survive going through walls. Even just sheet rock walls are usually enough to completely kill the momentum of any fragments that might make it though. If you use FMJ rounds for self defence then you’re going to catch a completely different charge.
He’d probably need to file a suit against the state or the YouTuber.
If he’s only cleared on 2/3 charges in the end, they’ll just slap a minimum of 6 months on him and call it time served.
He probably doesn’t have a leg to stand on suing the YouTuber if only cleared on 2/3 charges.
If he is cleared of all charges, he can sue the pants of both.
But lawsuits are expensive.
Those types of cases are usually taken on contingency, so money isn’t a huge factor.
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.
Quick correction, he was found guilty of discharging a firearm in a building, the other charge “use of firearm for aggravated malicious wounding” was one of the two the jury found him not guilty on.
If some random idiot wants to try and fuck with me and I don’t know them and I TEL THEM TO STOP and they persist. They get whatever I give them. If I have my kids they get no warning. I don’t fucking play and I don’t care about them. My safety and that of my kids is first. Do NOT FUCK WITH STRANGERS. PERIOD.
I think the key here is the fact there were 2 people who approached Colie. That substantially shifts the power balance. Its one thing when its 1 on 1 alone and the other person isn’t directly harming you yet, but acting threatening.
When you add a second person who is also engaging in your personal space though, the balance shifts and I think thats what completely justifies a preventative self defence, because when it comes to 2 on 1 you’re margin of safety thins dramatically.
To be specific:
If a single person is threatening you, then abruptly shifts to try and attack you, you have a fairly decent window of safety. You can turn and flee, you can push them away, etc etc. You’re ability to defend yourself after attacked is still quite reasonable.
If two people are threatening though, those options shrink down a lot. The second person can block off your escape, they can both grab you, etc. Once any of that happens you’re ability to defend yourself after attacked is very very unlikely.
So when its 2 on 1, you are a lot more justified to just shoot the person before they actually attack you, because you likely won’t get the chance to shoot them anyways after they attack.
In other words, if Cook hadn’t brought a friend along I think the outcome would have been very very different.
I think also a big part of why Colie was found not-guilty is that he disengaged, said 3 times “stop” including attempting to swipe away Cook, and only then did he take violent action to end the perceived threat. He fired a single round low into Cook, and then immediately retreated from the scene.
The argument at hand isn’t whether or not he was acting in self defence, but whether he used proportional force to justify it as such, and the jury found that it was proportional, likely due to the factors you described.
America is such a fucking insane country.
He fired a single round low into Cook, and then immediately retreated from the scene.
What clinical fucking bullshit. He tried to murder a stranger because they annoyed him for 20 seconds.
I think you are more on the clinical bullshit side.
First of all murder requires intend, planning, using the victims helplessness or particular cruelity.
Second of all, if the guy actually wanted to kill the other one, he wouldn’t have given off a single shot. He would have continued shooting.
Now whether it was appropriate as self defense, or whether people should be rolling around with guns in public in general can be up for debate. But clearly getting robbed and murdered is much more common in the US than in most developed countries, so the driver had more reason to fear for his life if two dudes just jump him. If he had probable reason to fear for his life then using the firearm seems to be an appropriate tool of self defense. And i say that as someone who is against people just casually running around with guns like it is normal in many US states.
Dude they will never get it because they do not equate these actions with fear and cowardice. They see the man with the gun as the tough guy, not the paranoid weirdo that he is.
Even the sane Americans that back gun control, etc. share this bias. They have grown up round this shit, it’s ingrained.
Which radically shifted the balance in his favor when in court. Virginia is a “duty to retreat” state and having the other guy behind him meant he was surrounded.
I believe you have it backwards. Virginia law has “NO duty to retreat”.
If I threaten to harm you, you don’t gotta try and escape first, you can strike.
For context, I’m a liberal gun owner who doesn’t carry all the time.
At first, I felt the shooter was on very thin ice. Your comment completely shifted my view on the situation. I might well have taken the shot myself, given the 2 on 1, and one coming from behind.
And remember kids! This is why we wait for a court of law to bring out the evidence before forming a solid opinion!
Thanks you so much for changing my mind, and doing so in a sane and logical manner.
When “it’s just a prank bro” goes too far. Imagine having consequences to your actions.
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.
Do note that this isn’t an exclusive statement; a knife is also extremely deadly.
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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.
So long as the strangers they interact with may be armed it’s just an arms race.
I don’t fully understand – are you stating this as a counterargument to allowing citizens to arm themselves?
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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?
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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.
Hey man, if he had to carry pepper spray or something instead how would you know he loves freedome eagle flags and trucks?
Hm, I’m not sure how practical this is. If one must defend themself, would it not be best to always be sure that one has the absolute best means of successfully doing so? I would argue that carrying a firearm increases these odds far more than carrying pepper spray.
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Your right, it’s best to just kill the shit out of anyone you think might be a threat. There can be no better solution.
In every normal country this couldn’t happen because that guy wouldn’t have a gun in the first place.
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.
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.
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?
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Are you replying to the following?
In every normal country this couldn’t happen because that guy wouldn’t have a gun in the first place.
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.
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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.
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?
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.
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):
34 (1) A person is not guilty of an offence if
(a) they believe on reasonable grounds that force is being used against them or another person or that a threat of force is being made against them or another person;
(b) the act that constitutes the offence is committed for the purpose of defending or protecting themselves or the other person from that use or threat of force; and
(c) the act committed is reasonable in the circumstances.
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:
weapon means any thing used, designed to be used or intended for use
(a) in causing death or injury to any person, or
(b) for the purpose of threatening or intimidating any person
and then further states
88 (1) Every person commits an offence who carries or possesses a weapon, an imitation of a weapon, a prohibited device or any ammunition or prohibited ammunition for a purpose dangerous to the public peace or for the purpose of committing an offence.
Punishment
(2) Every person who commits an offence under subsection (1)
(a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years; or
(b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.
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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I’m really surprised the DA took this to trial. I can’t imagine a jury in the US that would have returned a conviction.
Well that’s called cognitive dissonance. You can believe it. It happened. It only seems unbelievable because you don’t really know what the law is.
If you did, you’d know why the person was arrested, prosecuted, and why the case made it all the way to a jury without being dismissed along the way such as at a probable cause hearing or on a motion for directed verdict.
