A man who fired an assault rifle inside a Washington, D.C., restaurant in December 2016 while claiming to investigate the “pizzagate” hoax died this week after being fatally shot by police during a traffic stop in Kannapolis, North Carolina.
On the night of Jan. 4, Edgar Welch was a passenger in a 2001 GMC Yukon that was stopped by officers, Kannapolis police said Thursday in a news statement.
The traffic stop was conducted after officers linked the vehicle to Welch, who was wanted at the time on an outstanding arrest warrant, police said.
When officers recognized Welch and moved to arrest him, he produced a handgun from his jacket and pointed it at one of the officers, police said, and after refusing commands to drop the gun, two officers opened fire on him.
He died of his wounds at an area hospital two days later, on Jan. 6, police said.
The three officers involved in the traffic stop and the two other occupants in Welch’s vehicle were uninjured, police said.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation confirmed to CBS News Thursday Welch’s identity as the “pizzagate” shooter.
Welch fired his weapon inside the Comet Ping Pong restaurant on Dec. 4, 2016, after he drove there from North Carolina to investigate a false far-right conspiracy theory claiming that Democrats were running a child sex ring out of the restaurant, a claim that had garnered numerous threats against the eatery.
After he entered the crowded restaurant with an AR-15 assault rifle and a revolver, he fired the rifle into a door, authorities said at the time. No one was hurt.
He later pled guilty to one federal count each of interstate transportation of a firearm and assault with a dangerous weapon. In June 2017 he was sentenced by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji B. Jackson, then a U.S. district judge, to four years in prison.
AP
