Berliner Tageblatt - US 'Pizzagate' conspiracy theory gunman killed by police: media

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.

M.Ouellet--BTB