A jury on Thursday found a YouTube prankster not guilty of murder in the fatal shooting of a delivery driver in a mall food court earlier this year.
Alan Colie, 31, was found not guilty in the shooting death of Tanner Cook, 21, who ran the YouTube channel “Classified Goons.”
The jury was divided on two smaller gun charges and decided to convict him on one count and acquit him on the other.
On April 2, a shooting occurred at a food court in Dulles City Center, about 45 minutes west of the nation’s capital, sparking panic as shoppers fled fearing a mass shooting.
Corley has pleaded not guilty and said he acted in self-defence.
The ruling came Thursday after about five hours of deliberations. Three hours later, the jury was issued a note saying it was “divided on the basis of whether the defendant acted in self-defense.”
Loudoun County Circuit Court Judge Matthew Snow called the jury back into the courtroom around 3:30 p.m. and urged them to continue deliberations, a standard warning to jurors that the jury was deadlocked.
The jury then returned its verdict at the end of the day.
Coley’s defense attorney, Adam Poulliard, said the conviction on the gun charge was inconsistent with the law given that Coley was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. He asked the judge to quash the conviction. A judge will hear arguments on the issue at a hearing next month.
Corley has been in custody since his arrest in April and remains jailed.
Pulyar said in closing arguments Thursday that his client felt threatened by the 6-foot-5-inch (1.95-meter-tall) Cook during the confrontation, which was designed to elicit a reaction and engage the crowd. Watch Cook’s YouTube channel.
Pulyar said Cook “was trying to trick people into posting the video. He wasn’t worried that he would scare people. He did it all the time.”
Jurors watched video of shooting, captured a confrontation between Cook and Curley that lasted less than 30 seconds. The video shows Cook approaching Curley as he collects a portion of food. Cook stood in front of Curley, holding a cellphone about 6 inches (15 centimeters) from Curley’s face. The phone played the words “Hey, stop thinking about my twinkle” multiple times through the Google Translate app.
In the video, Kohli says “stop” three times and tries to back away from Cook, who continues to advance. Curley tried to knock the phone away from his face, then pulled out his gun and shot Cook in the lower left chest. There was no pause between the time he drew his weapon and the time he fired.
Prosecutor Eden Holmes said the facts did not support a self-defence argument. The law requires Curley to have reasonable fear that he is in imminent danger of bodily harm and not to use more force than necessary. She said Cook’s prank was strange but not threatening.
“They play a silly phrase on the phone,” she said. “How did the defendant discover that he had reason to fear imminent bodily harm?”
The charges of aggravated malicious wounding and malicious discharge of a firearm also require the jury to find that Corley acted with malice.
If the jury finds Corley was responding to a provocation that reasonably caused fear or anger, the law says there was no malice.
Corley, who has been incarcerated since his arrest in April, testified in his own defense about the fear sparked by Cook’s prank. Pulyar said in closing arguments that Corley was aware of the dangers delivery drivers could face when interacting with the public and that he had a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
Cook’s “Classified Goons” channel, which has more than 50,000 subscribers, is filled with distasteful stunts, such as pretending to vomit on an Uber driver and stalking unsuspecting customers through a department store. at preliminary hearingSheriff’s deputies testified that they knew Cook well and had received calls about previous stunts.
Cook said he will continue to make these videos, earning between $2,000 and $3,000 a month.
Svlook
