KEY POINTS

  • David Starnes admitted to fatally shooting Timothy Wilks
  • Starnes told the police that he was unaware of the prank and shot Wilks in self-defense
  • The police have not made any arrests in connection with the incident

A man in Tennessee was fatally shot Friday night after a robbery prank for a YouTube video went wrong, Nashville police said.

The incident happened at around 10:25 p.m. ET at the parking lot of Urban Air Indoor trampoline park in Nashville, Tennessee. The police responded to the scene and found 20-year-old Timothy Wilks fatally shot by 23-year-old David Starnes, reported ABC news.

Starnes remained at the scene after the incident and admitted to the police that he was unaware of the prank. He told the police that he had shot the victim in self-defense.

The witnesses told the detectives that Wilks, along with a friend, approached a group of people including Starnes with a butcher knife as part of the prank video.

The Nashville police have not issued any charges against Starnes in connection with the incident. The incident still remains under police investigation. The police have not revealed additional information regarding the incident, including the status of the friend who was with Wilks at the time of the shooting, reported news outlet NBC news.

In a similar report in August, YouTube celebrities, popularly called Stokes twins, were arrested on charges facing up to four years in state prison for their role in two fake bank robberies. Alan Stokes and Alex Stokes, 23-year-old twins with 4.8 million followers, were arrested for an incident that happened in October 2019, reported news outlet CNN.

The popular internet pranksters were accused of pretending to rob a bank upon ordering an Uber that refused to pick them up. The police initially arrived at the scene and issued a warning to the brothers and let them go. A few hours later, the police further received several emergency calls regarding the repeated behavior of the pair around the Irvine campus, University of California.

“These were not pranks,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said.

“These are crimes that could have resulted in someone getting seriously injured or even killed,” Spitzer added.

They were charged with one felony count of false imprisonment effected by violence, menace, fraud, or deceit, as well as one misdemeanor count of falsely reporting an emergency.

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Starnes remained at the scene after the incident and admitted to the police that he was unaware of the prank and shot the victim in self defense. pixabay
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