A man who nearly a decade ago fired a gun inside a Washington, D.C., restaurant due to a fake online conspiracy theory targeting Democrats and Hillary Clinton called “Pizzagate,” was recently shot and killed by North Carolina police.
Edgar Welch was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by officers in Kannapolis, N.C., on Jan. 4, 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.
City of Kannapolis communications director Annette Privette Keller confirmed the man who died was the same one involved in the 2016 incident at a Washington, D.C., restaurant.
At the time, authorities said, Welch drove from North Carolina with an assault rifle to Comet Ping Pong restaurant, believing an unfounded conspiracy theory that prominent Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring out of the pizzeria. The fake theory began circulating online during the height of the 2016 presidential election pitting Clinton against Donald Trump.
Welch entered the restaurant armed, and as customers fled the scene, he shot at a locked closet inside. After realizing there were no children held captive in the pizzeria, Welch peacefully surrendered. No one was injured.
Comet Ping Pong’s owner said the conspiracy theory and subsequent violence from it traumatized him and his staff.
Sentenced to 4 years in prison
Welch later pled guilty to interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition and assault with a dangerous weapon in 2017. He was subsequently sentenced to four years in prison by the judge, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is now a Supreme Court justice.
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.
Police said that when the officers approached the vehicle to arrest Welch, the man pulled out a handgun and pointed it at one of them. 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.