The infamous “Pizzagate” gunman who opened fire in a restaurant in 2016 after believing a Democrat conspiracy theory about child sex has been shot dead during a traffic stop.
Edgar Maddison Welch, 36, of Salisbury, North Carolina, was shot and killed Saturday evening in Kannapolis after police recognized a gray 2001 GMC Yukon in which he was a passenger.
An officer quickly realized the passenger was Welch – someone who had an outstanding warrant for his arrest for a probation violation.
When the officer opened the passenger door to arrest Welch, Kannapolis Police Chief Terry L. Spry said Welch “pulled a handgun from his jacket and pointed it in the officer’s direction.”
After failing to put the gun down when authorities asked, the officers who stopped him “fired their service weapon” at Welch.
Welch was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died from his injuries two days later, police said. No one else was injured.
On December 4, 2016, Welch terrorized people at the Comet Ping Pong restaurant in Washington DC with a loaded AR-15 assault rifle, believing the baseless conspiracy theory that Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring from the pizzeria.
After hearing the theory — which made waves during the 2016 presidential election and was linked to Hillary Clinton — Welch, then 28, stormed into the restaurant and shot into a locked cabinet as panicked guests ran for their lives.
Edgar Maddison Welch, 36, – the man convicted in 2016 of opening fire at a Washington DC pizzeria – was shot and killed in Kannapolis on Saturday evening
On December 4, 2016, Welch terrorized people at the Comet Ping Pong restaurant with a loaded AR-15 assault rifle, believing the baseless conspiracy theory that Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring from the pizzeria (photo)
After realizing no children were trapped, Welch surrendered to police. No one was injured during the chaos.
Welch was sentenced to four years in prison in 2017 after pleading guilty to charges of transporting firearms across state lines and assault with a dangerous weapon.
U.S. District Judge Kentanji B. Jackson said that while no one was injured in the Dec. 4 shooting, “the extent of the recklessness in this case is breathtaking.”
The judge said Welch “continued” an “ill-conceived plot” even as others urged him to abandon it.
She added that Welch should have notified police if he truly believed children were being harmed.
In court, the then 29-year-old, accompanied by his mother, father, sister and fiancée, briefly apologized and said his words “cannot undo or change what has already happened.”
Two Comet Ping Pong employees and owner James Alefantis also spoke before the sentencing. Alefantis called “pizzagate” a “vicious web of lies” and said many people had suffered because of Welch’s actions.
Welch, a father of two, drove more than 200 miles from North Carolina to Washington DC to personally investigate the conspiracy theory and rescue potential sex slaves.
After realizing no children were trapped, Welch surrendered to police. No one was injured during the chaos
The claims arose after the emails of Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman John Podesta were published on Wikileaks.
Extrapolating emails that mentioned “cheese pizza,” internet users thought it was a code word for “cp” or “child pornography.” Podesta’s correspondence with Alefantis also fanned the flames of speculation.
In a two-minute recording he made during the drive to the restaurant, Welch addressed his daughters and said, “I can’t let you grow up in a world so corrupted by evil without at least caring for you and for to stand up for other children. just like you.’
As part of his guilty plea, Welch agreed to hand over the rifle, revolver and shotgun he had left in his car at the time of the incident. He also agreed to pay the restaurant $5,744.33.
In return, prosecutors dropped a third charge of possessing a firearm while committing a violent crime, which carried a maximum sentence of 15 years.
In his one-page handwritten letter filed with the court after the shooting, Welch said he “came to D.C. with the intention of helping people who I believed were in dire need of help, and to put an end to a corruption that I really thought needed help. felt it was harming innocent lives.”
He wrote that he wanted to apologize and that he acted without considering the consequences of his actions or the potential harm.
“It was never my intention to harm or frighten innocent lives, but I now realize how foolish and reckless my decision was,” he wrote.
Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis has said the ‘pizzagate’ hoax that spread across the internet threw the lives of everyone involved with the store into chaos.
Welch’s attorney Dani Jahn asked for a 1.5-year prison sentence, citing Welch’s previous work as an emergency medical technician and volunteer trip to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake there.
She wrote that he is an involved parent to his seven-year-old stepdaughter and four-year-old daughter.
Jahn also noted that he surrendered peacefully after realizing no children were injured in the restaurant. Welch was released from prison in 2021.
Nearly a year after the attack, Hillary and Bill Clinton bought dozens of pizzas from the DC restaurant.
‘People could have been killed. He fired his automatic weapon in this pizza parlor,” Hillary said as she spoke with Politics & Prose co-owner Lissa Muscatine on stage at DC’s Warner Theater.
Muscatine, a longtime friend and former speechwriter of Hillary, explained how the shooting had thrown the entire neighborhood into turmoil.
‘A few days after that, you and your husband said, “What can we do to support Comet, can we buy pizzas?” So you bought, I don’t know how many pizzas, but it was a lot of pizzas, and sent them to participate in a literacy program, an after-school literacy program in DC,” Muscatine revealed, again thanking Hillary for “quietly” supporting the companies.
The former US Secretary of State then walked the audience through ‘Pizzagate’ again as it served as an example of how the Russians used the email hacks.
She reminded them how her campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails were “stolen” by the Russians — saying she hated the word “hacked” — and then handed them over to Wikileaks, where they were selectively released.