‘Pizzagate’ gunman who attacked D.C. restaurant in 2016 killed by police in North Carolina

A North Carolina man who fired shots into a popular D.C. pizza parlor that internet conspiracy theorists convinced him housed a satanic pedophile ring linked to Democrats was shot to death last week by two North Carolina police officers. Authorities said he pulled a gun on them during a traffic stop.

Edgar Maddison Welch became the name and face associated with the “Pizzagate” theory - the bizarre suggestion that children were being trafficked out of Comet Ping Pong, a busy, family-oriented pizza shop on Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington. On a Sunday afternoon in December 2016, having driven straight from his hometown of Salisbury, North Carolina, police said, Welch walked into the restaurant openly carrying an AR-15-style rifle and a revolver, causing customers and employees to flee in horror.

After a few minutes, Welch encountered a locked room and tried to force open the door, firing his rifle multiple times into the door, federal prosecutors said. After spending more than 20 minutes inside, Welch dropped his guns and exited Comet Ping Pong unarmed. No one was hurt. He would later plead guilty to federal firearms charges and receive a sentence of four years in prison. Federal records show he was released from custody in May 2020.

On the morning of Jan. 4, police in Kannapolis, North Carolina, northeast of Charlotte, said they encountered Welch as a passenger in a GMC Yukon and determined he was wanted for a felony probation violation. Officers moved to his side of the car and ordered him out of the vehicle, according to a release from the Kannapolis Police Department.

When an officer attempted to open the passenger door to arrest Welch, police allege that Welch pulled a handgun from his jacket and pointed it at the officer. That officer, and a second officer who arrived to assist, commanded Welch to drop the weapon, Kannapolis police said. Authorities allege that he refused, leading both officers to fire, police said.

Welch was hospitalized and died Jan. 6, police said. Kannapolis police identified the officers as Brooks Jones and Caleb Tate. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the shooting.

When Welch last appeared in D.C. federal court in June 2017, his judge was U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, now on the Supreme Court. Welch was apologetic, telling Jackson: “I wish there were a way that I could offer something other than an apology. … I realize mere words can’t undo what happened … but I am sorry.”

James Alefantis, who owns Comet Ping Pong, also appeared in court, saying the “physical terror” created by Welch and the rumors that fueled his actions that day “left lasting damage on the people I love.”

“One day in a more truthful time we will remember this day as an aberration,” Alefantis added, when “lies were seen as real and our social fabric had frayed.”

Welch had watched YouTube videos and shows featuring far-right commentators such as Alex Jones, authorities have said, that theorized that Hillary Clinton was involved in a satanic pedophile ring before gathering several loaded guns and driving directly from his North Carolina home to Northwest D.C.

Welch pleaded guilty to a federal charge of interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition, and a D.C. charge of assault with a dangerous weapon. Jackson said she was issuing a stiff sentence to uphold the rule of law against vigilante justice. His posttrial supervision was set to end in 2023.

“I hope you understand and see how much people have suffered because of what you did,” Jackson said. “I am truly sorry you find yourself in the position you are in, because you do seem like a nice person who on your own mind was trying to do the right thing. But that does not excuse reckless conduct and the real damage that it caused.”

In plea papers, Welch, a father of two young girls, acknowledged that he had become agitated by reports and videos he read and saw online about the supposed sex ring, before loading his Toyota Prius with arms and ammunition for the drive from his home to Washington.

“Raiding a pedo ring, possibly sacrificing the lives of a few for the lives of many,” Welch wrote in one of several text messages in an unsuccessful effort to recruit friends for what he said would be a violent confrontation, authorities said in 2017.

“Standing up against a corrupt system that kidnaps, tortures and rapes ­babies and children in our own backyard,” he wrote in another exchange, documented in court papers.

In March 2017, Jones, a conservative radio host and then the operator of the Infowars website, apologized for promoting the Pizzagate conspiracy. Jones posted a six-minute video on his website in which he read a prepared statement saying that neither the restaurant nor its owner, Alefantis, had anything to do with human trafficking. The statement came after Alefantis’s attorneys had requested a retraction.

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Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.