A 20-year-old YouTuber Timothy Wilks was shot to death while filming a prank robbery video for his YouTube channel.

The incident, which happened outside the Urban Air Trampoline and Adventure Park in Nashville, Tennessee as Wilks and a friend approached a group of people in a car park at around 9:25pm on Friday. 

Wilks is said to have been holding butchers’ knives as they were filming a prank video, the friend he was with told police.

David Starnes Jr, 23, who was among the group Wilks approached, told police that he shot Wilks in self-defence and was unaware that a prank was being carried out.

Nobody has been charged in connection with the incident and an investigation is ongoing. The status of Wilks’s friend who approached the group with him is unknown. 

Prank videos are a popular but controversial feature to court viewership on the video sharing platform. 

In August last year, content creators Alan and Alex Stokes were arrested after allegedly staging two fake bank robberies in which an Uber driver was held at gunpoint by police during the incident.

The twin brothers were charged with false imprisonment and falsely reporting an emergency. 

In January the same year, a teenager was reportedly taken into police custody after carrying out a robbery prank on his own mother in Ohio, the teen and his friends filmed themselves accosting the woman with what appeared to be a handgun while shouting “where’s the money at?”.

Two teenagers were arrested for inducing panic.