The “pizzagate” gunman who fired his rifle in a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant in 2016 after acting on a debunked conspiracy theory has died following a fatal traffic stop.
Edgar Maddison Welch was shot by police over the weekend and died from his injuries on Monday, authorities in North Carolina said Thursday.
Almost 10 years ago, Welch made national headlines when he traveled to the nation’s capital from North Carolina and fired shots in the Comet Ping Pong restaurant, spurred by a conspiracy theory that had spread online.
Prosecutors said at the time that Welch was trying to investigate an internet conspiracy theory about the pizza restaurant being home to a child sex-trafficking ring connected to prominent Democratic politicians, a false claim that became known as “pizzagate.”
Welch, who was 28 when the incident occurred, ended up surrendering to police after he did not find evidence to support the conspiracy theory, according to court documents at the time.
Welch was sentenced in 2017 to four years in prison after pleading guilty to weapons charges. He had carried an AR-15 rifle and revolver into the restaurant, according to investigators. No one was injured by the gunfire.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sentenced Welch when she served as a federal judge, saying at the time that his actions “literally left psychological wreckage,” according to The Associated Press.
Police Chief Terry L. Spry in Kannapolis, North Carolina, said in a news release Thursday that Welch was shot by police on Saturday during a traffic stop, and that a police officer “recognized the front seat passenger as the person with the outstanding warrant for arrest.”
When an officer opened the passenger door to arrest Welch, Spry said, Welch “pulled a handgun from his jacket and pointed it in the direction of the officer” and did not put down the gun when commanded by officers.
“After the passenger failed to comply with their repeated requests, both officers fired their duty weapon at the passenger, striking him,” Spry said.
Welch had an outstanding arrest warrant for violating probation, according to the police department.
Fiona Glisson contributed.
