Delivery driver who shot a YouTube prankster, Tanner Cook, acquitted by jury

The jury then delivered its verdicts at the end of the day.

Colie’s defense attorney, Adam Pouilliard, said the conviction on the firearms charge is inconsistent with the law, given Colie’s acquittal on self defense grounds. He asked the judge to set aside the conviction. A judge will hear arguments on the issue at a hearing next month.

Colie, who has been in custody since his April arrest, will remain incarcerated.

Pouilliard said during Thursday’s closing arguments that his client felt menaced by the 6-foot-5 (1.95-meter-tall) Cook during the confrontation, which was designed to provoke a reaction and to draw viewers to Cook’s YouTube channel.

Cook, Pouilliard said, “is trying to confuse people to post videos. He’s not worried that he’s scaring people. He keeps doing this.”

Jurors saw video of the shooting, which captures the confrontation between Cook and Colie lasting less than 30 seconds. The footage shows Cook approaching Colie as he picks up a food order. 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.

Video played in court shows the encounter between a YouTube prankster and the food delivery driver who shot him inside a Virginia mall.

A jury on Thursday found 31-year-old Alan Colie not guilty of aggravated malicious wounding in the shooting of 21-year-old Tanner Cook, who runs the “Classified Goons” YouTube channel. The jury was split on two lesser firearms counts and decided to convict him on one and acquit him on the other.

Cook made a nonsensical recording on his cellphone, and on April 2, he approached Colie in the food court of Dulles Towne Center and followed Colie while playing the audio.

Prosecutors told the jury Colie took a gun to a cellphone fight, but the jury sided with Colie’s self-defense claim, which is usually reserved for someone who has good reason to believe that they’re in serious physical danger.