'Pizzagate' gunman killed by police after traffic stop
'Pizzagate' gunman killed by police after traffic stop
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The "pizzagate" gunman who fired a rifle inside a restaurant, acting on a fake online conspiracy theory, has died after police shot him following a traffic stop. Edgar Maddison Welch was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by police in Kannapolis, North Carolina, on Saturday night, the authorities said.
One of the officers recognised the car as belonging to someone they had arrested and who had an outstanding arrest warrant, Kannapolis Police Department said in a statement. When police approached the vehicle to arrest Welch, he was said to have pulled out a handgun and pointed it at an officer.
He was instructed to drop the weapon but didn't and two officers shot Welch, police said. He was taken to hospital and died from his injuries two days later. None of the officers, nor the car's driver or other passenger were injured. 'Pizzagate'. In 2016, Welch made international headlines after he fired a shot inside the Comet Ping Pong restaurant in Washington DC.
Believing an unfounded conspiracy theory that prominent Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring out of the pizzeria, Welch drove from North Carolina with an assault rifle to the restaurant. The fake theory was dubbed "pizzagate" and had surfaced online during the 2016 presidential election.
Welch, 28 at the time, had entered the restaurant armed, as customers fled the scene, and shot at a locked closet. Read more from Sky News:Everything we know about the LA wildfiresPolice search for missing sisters2024 first year to breach global warming threshold.
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