A YouTube creator was filming a prank video inside a Virginia shopping mall Sunday when a man pulled out a gun and shot him, police say. Tanner Cook, 21, was critically injured as a bullet pierced his stomach and liver just before noon, prompting the mall to close for the remainder of the day, per WUSA and the Loudoun Times-Mirror. "I was playing a prank and a simple practical joke, and this guy didn't take it very well," Cook tells WUSA from his hospital bed. "He didn't say anything to me" but instead opened fire in a moment captured on video, which is now in the hands of police.
The shooting led armed officers to the Dulles Town Center, where officers surrounded a suspect lying on the floor. Identified as 31-year-old Alan Colie of Leesburg, he's charged with aggravated malicious wounding, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and discharging a firearm within a building and held without bond. "I've heard from so many of my constituents and they're traumatized," Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis Randall tells WUSA. "People have secondary trauma from this and may never walk back into this mall again."
It's not entirely clear what interaction the two men had. Cook's father Jeramy tells WUSA that his son was "having fun with people." Cook's YouTube channel "Classified Goons," with nearly 40,000 subscribers, shows him angering people in a variety of ways. In one video, he fake vomits on Uber drivers. Another video shows Cook informing a Target shopper that he's being filmed and followed by Cook's own cameraman, whom the man charges. Some prank victims "became aggressive and even called the police," per Insider. Cook says he'll continue making prank videos once he's recovered. (More shooting stories.)
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