YouTube prankster Tanner Cook’s stunt fails, shot by target

A YouTube prankster’s attempt to pull a fast one at a Virginia mall literally backfired after the intended target got mad and shot him in the stomach.

“I was playing a prank, a simple practical joke, and this guy didn’t take it very well and shot me,” Tanner Cook, 21, told WUSA9 from his hospital bed in the intensive care unit.

Cook runs the YouTube channel Classified Goons, which features him performing “Jackass”-style pranks on unsuspecting people.

Some of these harebrained gags have included pretending to urinate in stores and asking strangers to play “naked Twister.”

Authorities didn’t specify the nature of the youngster’s latest stunt, which he filmed with friends near a Cheesecake Factory at the Dulles Town Center in Dulles.

However, the prank did not sit well with the intended target, Leesburg’s Alan Collie, 31, who whipped out a semi-automatic pistol and shot the YouTuber, striking him in the stomach and liver.

“They were making a video at the mall and trying to have fun with people and this guy wasn’t having fun,” Tanner’s father Jeramy Cook described. “There was a phone that was around him and they were interviewing or talking to him, and he didn’t like it and he pulled out his gun and shot my son.”

The two reportedly did not know each other prior to the incident, per a statement by the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office.

The shooting reportedly caused panic at the mall, which just reopened Monday after being shuttered for the previous day.

The actual incident wasn’t caught on camera. However, footage filmed by Instagram user @thisismyu5ername showed Colie being arrested in the aftermath of the act.

Meanwhile, one of Cook’s friends also captured footage of the man pulling the gun, which is now being used as evidence against the suspect.

Colie is currently being charged with aggravated malicious wounding, shooting in the commission of a felony and discharging firearms within an occupied building. 

The suspect appeared via video at the Loudoun General District Court on Monday and “is due back in court” for a preliminary hearing on May 3, per the aforementioned statement.

He is currently being held without bond at the Loudoun County Adult Detention Center.

The incident left the YouTube creator shaken but undeterred. Cook, who is still in the hospital, said he’s not going to let the shooting discourage him from creating prank videos.

This isn’t the first time a YouTube prank has gone horribly awry.

In 2017, a 22-year-old Minnesota man died after instructing his pregnant girlfriend to shoot a gun at a book he was holding over his chest, presumably hoping the tome would stop the bullet.