THE NEW YORK TIMES – A man in North Carolina who fired a rifle inside a Washington restaurant in 2016 because he wrongly believed an internet conspiracy known as Pizzagate was fatally shot by the police in North Carolina over the weekend when he pulled out a gun during a traffic stop, the authorities said.
The man, Edgar Maddison Welch, 36, of Salisbury, N.C., was a passenger in a car on Saturday night when an officer with the Kannapolis Police Department recognized him from a prior arrest and believed there was an outstanding warrant over a felony probation violation, Chief Terry L. Spry of the Kannapolis Police Department said in a statement on Thursday.
When the officer confirmed his suspicion and went to arrest him, Mr. Welch pulled out a handgun and pointed it at the officer, the police said.
The police officer and a second officer ordered Mr. Welch to put his gun down. When he did not comply, they shot at him, the department said.
Mr. Welch died on Monday at a hospital in Charlotte as a result of his injuries.
Neither of the officers or any of the other passengers in the car were injured, Chief Spry said.
Annette Privette Keller, director of communications for the city of Kannapolis, about 30 miles northeast of Charlotte, said that the city believed the man who was killed was the same person who was sentenced to four years in prison for the Pizzagate episode.
He shared the same name, place of residence and age.
The shooting at Comet Ping Pong, a pizza parlor in Washington came amid a frenzy of false online rumors and accusations during the 2016 presidential campaign that the restaurant was holding children as sex slaves as part of a child-abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton …
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