The “pizzagate” gunman who opened fire in a Washington, DC pizzeria eight years ago because he falsely believed it was the center of a Hillary Clinton-involved child sex ring was fatally shot by North Carolina cops during a traffic stop Saturday, according to authorities.
Kannapolis police officers shot Edgar Welch, of the city of Salisbury, after he pulled a gun on authorities while sitting in the front passenger’s side of a 2001 GMC Yukon, according to the police department.
Welch gained notoriety in December 2016 when he pulled the trigger of an AR-15 inside DC’s Comet Ping Pong, claiming he was “standing up against a corrupt system that kidnaps, tortures and rapes babies and children in our own backyard,” court papers said at the time.
The disturbed gunman, who drove from North Carolina, believed a conspiracy that wildly claimed Clinton and her presidential campaign chair, John Podesta, were behind the non-existent child sex ring from the eatery’s basement.
He shot a storage door and fortunately did not injure anyone inside. He surrendered when he realized no children were held captive.
Welch pleaded guilty to federal charges and was sentenced to four years in prison in 2017 by now-Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was then a district judge.
But he again found himself in legal trouble – that cost him his life this time – when cops pulled over the car he was in this weekend and recognized him as a suspect who had an outstanding warrant on a felony probation violation, according to law enforcement.
When one of the cops opened the door to arrest Welch, the convict pulled a gun from his jacket and pointed it toward the officer, Kannapolis police said.
After he refused to drop the weapon, two officers shot him and he was rushed to a local hospital. He died of his wounds on Monday.
The trio of officers on the scene and the driver were uninjured.
“The investigation of this incident remains on-going by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and the officers who fired their duty weapon remain on administrative leave as is standard protocol,” the department said in a statement.
With Post wires
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