Jan. 9 (UPI) — A North Carolina man who fired a gun inside a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant in 2016 due to a right-wing conspiracy theory was fatally shot by police last week during a traffic stop, authorities said Thursday.
The man, Edgar Maddison Welch, 36, of Salisbury, N.C., was shot and killed Saturday night by police who pulled over his 2001 GMC Yukon in Kannapolis, N.C., to arrest him over an outstanding warrant.
Kannapolis is a city of a little more than 59,000 people about 30 miles northeast of Charlotte.
The local police chief, Terry Spry, said in a statement that Welch had been sitting in the front passenger seat of the vehicle when officers initiated the traffic stop. When an officer opened his passenger door to conduct the arrest, Welch allegedly pulled a handgun and pointed it at the arresting officer.
Welch was shot by officers Brooks Jones and Caleb Tate after he failed to comply with their repeated demands to drop the gun, Spry said.
He was transported to Atrium Health Cabarrus in Concord, then transferred to Atrium health Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte where he succumbed to his injuries.
Spry explained the arresting officer pulled over the Yukon, knowing that is is “normally driven by an individual who he had previously arrested, and knew had an outstanding warrant for arrest.”
Welch was wanted for an unspecified felony probation violation.
Annette Privette Kerlly, communications director for Kannapolis, told The New York Times that they believe the Edgar Maddison Welch shot dead last week is the same man who was sentenced to four years in federal prison in 2017 for firing an assault rifle into the ground of Washington, D.C.’s Comet Ping Pong pizzeria on Dec. 4, 2016.
During the 2016 presidential election, Comet Ping Pong had been at the center of the baseless right-wing “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory.
Pushed by extreme right-wing conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones, the theory falsely claimed that then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign team were running a satanic child sex ring from the establishment.
Welch purportedly drove from North Carolina to the Washington, D.C., pizzeria to investigate the claims himself. No one was injured in the shooting, which he pleaded guilty to in federal court.
The fatal police-involved shooting is being investigated by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and the two officers who fired their duty weapons have been placed on administrative leave, per police protocol.