[A man who was motivated to fire a gun inside a Washington, D.C. restaurant after believing 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, 29, was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by officers in Kannapolis on Saturday night. When the officers approached the vehicle to arrest him for an outstanding warrant, Welch pulled out a handgun and pointed it at one of the officers, prompting two officers to shoot him. Emergency responders took Welch to the hospital, where he died two days later. The “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which emerged during the 2016 presidential election, claimed that prominent Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring out of Comet Ping Pong restaurant in Washington, D.C. Suffolk County Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson sentenced Welch to four years in prison in 2017. The shooting death is being reviewed by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, and the officers who fired at Welch are on administrative leave.
Source link