"Pizzagate" Gunshooter Edgar Maddison Welch, a Car Passenger, Dies Two Days after Traffic Stop

Dr Margaret Aranda

Jan 16, 2025

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police holding rifle while standing — A Traffic Stop Leads to Death | Photo by Vincent Chan on Unsplash

The Tweet

Source: https://x.com/TheEmmapreneur/status/1877552096364384598

The Link:

According to Insider Paper

A man notorious for shooting up a pizzeria in the US capital where he wrongly believed Hillary Clinton and other Democrats were running a child sex ring has been killed in a traffic stop police shooting, local media reported Thursday.
The North Carolina man who died Monday, two days after the incident with police, has now been identified as Edgar Maddison Welch, who was at the center of the bizarre story that came to be known as “Pizzagate,” news outlets said.
It involved the bogus conspiracy theory that Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizza restaurant, was a hub for a child sex trafficking ring involving Clinton — who ran for US president in 2016 — and other prominent Democrats.
In December of that year, Welch was arrested after he fired his assault rifle inside the eatery. He told police that he drove up from North Carolina to personally investigate stories that Comet was a center for child abduction.
The false claim was an early taste of the conspiracy theories that would later abound among far-right conservatives in the Donald Trump era.
Welch, then 29, was sentenced in 2017 to four years in prison after being convicted of a federal charge of interstate transport of firearms and a Washington DC charge of assault with a dangerous weapon. He was released from prison in March 2020.
When Welch was sentenced, the US attorney’s office said the judge in the case declared “the extent of the recklessness in this case is breathtaking” and it was only through “sheer luck” that no one was wounded.
On Saturday, police in the North Carolina town of Kannapolis stopped a car they believed to be driven by someone with an outstanding warrant. The driver was Welch.
When police tried to open the car and arrest him, Welch pulled a gun and refused orders to drop it.
Two officers then shot him, the Charlotte Observer newspaper reported.
Welch died two days later in the hospital.
Source: https://insiderpaper.com/us-pizzagate-conspiracy-theory-gunman-killed-by-police-media/

The Thread

The Link: https://rumble.com/v18k75j-connecting-a-crisis-re-upload2018.html?e9s=src_v1_upp

The Link: https://x.com/DiddyLube/status/1877527291405738375

An Article

By MAKIYA SEMINERA
Updated 2:58 PM CST, January 10, 2025
A man who fired a gun inside a Washington D.C. restaurant, motivated by a fake online conspiracy theory called “Pizzagate” 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 SUV as one he’d seen Welch drive before, police said. The officer had arrested Welch before and knew he had an outstanding warrant for a felony probation violation at the time, according to authorities.
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 Ketanji 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.
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This story corrects spelling of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s first name
Source: https://apnews.com/article/pizzagate-gunman-dead-police-shooting-north-carolina-81f0383fb55587350576b8265b7b5dd5