KANNAPOLIS, N.C. (AP) — A man who fired a gun inside a restaurant in the nation’s capital after a fake online conspiracy theory called “Pizzagate” motivated him to do so nearly a decade ago was shot and killed by North Carolina police during a weekend traffic stop.

Edgar Maddison Welch was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by officers in Kannapolis on Saturday night, according to a Kannapolis Police Department news release. One of the officers recognized the car as the vehicle of someone he had arrested and who had an outstanding warrant for a felony probation violation — Welch, police said.

When the officers approached the vehicle to arrest Welch, police said the man pulled out a handgun and pointed it at one of the officers. After he was instructed to drop the weapon but didn’t, two officers shot Welch, authorities said.

Emergency responders took Welch to the hospital and he died from his injuries two days later, according to the release. None of the officers, nor the driver and another passenger, were injured.

In 2016, authorities said, Welch drove from North Carolina with an assault rifle to Comet Ping Pong restaurant in Washington after believing an unfounded conspiracy theory that prominent Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring out of the pizzeria. The fake theory, dubbed “Pizzagate,” began circulating online during the 2016 presidential election.

He entered the restaurant armed, and as customers fled the scene, Welch shot at a locked closet inside. After realizing there were no children held captive in the pizzeria, Welch peacefully surrendered. No one was injured.

At the time, Comet Ping Pong’s owner, James Alefantis, said the conspiracy theory and subsequent violence from it traumatized him and his staff.

Welch later pled guilty to interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition and assault with a dangerous weapon in 2017. His judge, now Supreme Court Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson, subsequently sentenced him to four years in prison.

City of Kannapolis communications director Annette Privette Keller confirmed the man who died was the same one involved in the “Pizzagate” incident.

The shooting death of Welch, a resident of Salisbury, is under review by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, and the officers who fired at him are on administrative leave, per the department’s protocol.

  • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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    3 hours ago

    What is that surprising?

    The police acted appropriately to an individual pulling a gun on them during a traffic stop.

    What would you have done in the same situation?

    • solarvector@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 hours ago

      They showed remarkable restraint in not immediately shooting someone who pulled out a gun, and when they did fire, they did not invite themselves or bystanders. It doesn’t initially seem like they did anything wrong and they executed it well. That’s the surprising part.

      To answer your question, at my skill level, probably missed and shot someone else.