The Tanner Cook shooting case ended with the shooter, DoorDash driver Alan Colie, acquitted of the serious wounding charges and convicted only of unlawfully firing a gun inside an occupied building. A Loudoun County jury accepted that Colie genuinely feared for his safety when the 6-foot-5 YouTube prankster cornered him in a mall food court in April 2023, but it still held him responsible for pulling the trigger in a crowded public space. He received time served and six months of post-release supervision, and the Virginia Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction on September 30, 2025.1Virginia’s Judicial System. Alan W. Colie v. Commonwealth of Virginia
What Happened at Dulles Town Center
On April 2, 2023, Cook and his associates went to Dulles Town Center in Loudoun County, Virginia, to film a prank. Their target was Colie, a delivery driver picking up a food order in the food court. Cook walked up to Colie and held a cellphone about six inches from his face. The phone blared a crude phrase on repeat through a translation app.
The whole encounter lasted roughly 20 seconds. Video shows Colie telling Cook to stop and trying to back away while Cook kept advancing. Colie tried to knock the phone aside. When that failed, he drew a handgun and fired once, striking Cook in the lower left chest. The bullet hit Cook’s stomach and liver. Shoppers scattered, many of them initially fearing a mass shooting.
Who Tanner Cook Was
Cook ran a YouTube channel called “Classified Goons” that built its audience on stunts designed to provoke strangers in public. Content included pretending to vomit on rideshare drivers and trailing shoppers through stores. Local deputies were already familiar with the group. At a preliminary hearing, sheriff’s deputies testified they had fielded multiple calls about the group’s prior stunts. Cook himself admitted on cross-examination that mall security had thrown him out of Dulles Town Center the day before the shooting while he was trying to film pranks.
That backdrop mattered at trial. Cook told the jury he had no idea he was frightening anyone, a claim that sat uneasily next to a channel built on frightening people and an ejection from the same mall 24 hours earlier.
The Charges Against Alan Colie
Prosecutors brought three counts, and the stakes varied sharply between them.
The lead charge was aggravated malicious wounding, a Class 2 felony carrying 20 years to life. Conviction required proof that Colie intentionally wounded Cook with intent to maim, disfigure, disable, or kill, and that the injury was both severe and permanently impairing.2Virginia Code Commission. Code of Virginia 18.2-51.2 – Aggravated Malicious Wounding; Penalty Because the count alleged malice, self-defense went straight to the heart of it: genuine fear meant no malice.
The second count was using a firearm in the commission of a felony, which carries a three-year mandatory minimum for a first offense, served consecutively.3Virginia Code Commission. Code of Virginia 18.2-53.1 – Use or Display of Firearm in Committing Felony It rode on the wounding charge; without the underlying felony, this one fell away.
The third count was unlawful discharge of a firearm inside an occupied building. Virginia law splits this offense by state of mind: firing maliciously is a Class 4 felony, firing unlawfully without malice is a Class 6 felony.4Virginia Code Commission. Code of Virginia 18.2-279 – Discharging Firearms or Missiles Within or at Building or Dwelling House; Penalty A Class 6 felony carries up to five years, though a judge or jury can reduce the sentence to up to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500.5Virginia Code Commission. Code of Virginia 18.2-10 – Punishment for Conviction of Felony; Penalty
How Virginia Self-Defense Law Applied
Virginia has no stand-your-ground statute, but its courts have long held that a person lawfully in a public place has no duty to retreat before using force in self-defense. That mattered here because Colie was standing in a food court with nowhere obvious to go, and Cook kept closing the distance after being told to stop.
Deadly force in self-defense generally requires three things in Virginia. The threat must be proportional: a person must face death or serious bodily harm before responding with lethal force. The danger must be imminent, not hypothetical. And the person must hold a reasonable belief that deadly force is necessary, judged both by what they actually believed and by what a reasonable person in the same situation would have believed.
The prosecution argued that Cook was unarmed, that this was a prank, and that no reasonable person would shoot over a cellphone in the face. The defense countered that Colie had no way to know it was a prank. From his angle, a much larger stranger was aggressively invading his space, ignoring his requests to stop, and playing a bizarre, unintelligible message. The strangeness of the encounter, the defense argued, made it more threatening, not less, because Colie could not predict what Cook intended.
The Split Verdict
Colie testified that he was scared and acted to protect himself from what he perceived as an imminent physical threat. The jury acquitted him of aggravated malicious wounding, all of its lesser-included offenses (malicious wounding, unlawful wounding, and assault and battery), and the firearm-use enhancement.1Virginia’s Judicial System. Alan W. Colie v. Commonwealth of Virginia Every count that required malice or an underlying felony collapsed.
The jury convicted him on the remaining count: unlawfully discharging a firearm inside an occupied building, a Class 6 felony.6Loudoun County: News & Announcements. Jury Convicts Alan Colie of Discharging a Firearm Within an Occupied Building The split says something specific. The jury believed Colie’s fear was real enough to erase malice, but it was not willing to excuse firing a gun inside a crowded mall. Genuine fear and reckless endangerment of bystanders can coexist, and the verdict held both at once.
Sentence and Appeal
Though the conviction carried up to five years, the circuit court sentenced Colie to time served and six months of post-release supervision.1Virginia’s Judicial System. Alan W. Colie v. Commonwealth of Virginia The sentence tracked the jury’s read of the facts: someone who reacted to a genuinely alarming situation, not someone who set out to hurt anyone.
Colie appealed, arguing that the evidence was insufficient because he had acted in self-defense and challenging four jury instructions. On September 30, 2025, the Virginia Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, finding the evidence sufficient and the jury instructions proper.1Virginia’s Judicial System. Alan W. Colie v. Commonwealth of Virginia
What the Case Signals for Prank Content
The verdict effectively said that a stranger on the receiving end of an aggressive public stunt can reasonably read it as a threat, and that the prankster’s private knowledge it is “just a joke” does not control the legal analysis. Intent is measured from the perspective of the person being confronted, not the person behind the camera.
Recording in public is generally legal, but the analysis shifts when the recording involves conduct that amounts to harassment or causes someone to reasonably fear imminent physical harm. Cook did not passively film; he invaded a stranger’s personal space, refused to stop when asked, and persisted in a way a reasonable person could find threatening. That deputies already knew the group and mall security had removed Cook the day before made it hard to sell the encounter as harmless. Colie left with a felony conviction. Cook left with a bullet wound that required surgery.