He’s said the incident isn’t going to stop him making videos
A popular YouTuber who makes prank videos has ended up in hospital after one of his targets didn’t take too kindly to his antics.
Tanner Cook regularly makes videos of him behaving oddly around strangers, sharing them with his 40,000 followers on his channel Classified Goons.
On Sunday, he was playing a practical joke on a man at a mall in the Washington suburb of Dulles, Virginia, with his friend recording the video.
But things took a serious turn when his target, 31-year-old Alan Colie, pulled a gun on Cook and shot him in the stomachs, according to authorities.
Cook ended up having to undergo surgery after he was taken to hospital in a critical condition.
Speaking to local TV station WUSA from his hospital, Cook said: “I was playing a … simple … joke, and this guy didn’t take it very well.”
He said Colie didn’t say anything before opening fire on him, which sparked panic inside the mall, according to local sheriff Mike Chapman.
Police arrested Colie over the incident and he was charged with aggravated malicious wounding, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and discharging a firearm within a building.
Some of Cook’s previous videos include him pretending to vomit on Uber drivers, making a worker at a fast-food restaurant nervous by going behind the counter, and generally bothering people in shops.
Whilst this is certainly the most extreme reaction to one of his pranks, people have reacted angrily in the past to Cook. In one video, the man being pranked runs at the camera, whilst in another a store manager calls the police on Cook, the Guardian reports.
Cook has said he is not angry at Colie though, and that the shooting will not deter him from continuing to make prank videos.
His father, Jeramy Cook, said he is confident his son will make a full recovery.
Colie – who’s father accused him of punching him twice in the head in 2012, before the case was dismissed in 2014 – has been detained without bond following the shooting.
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