Photograph by Evy Mages Edgar Maddison Welch has died after being shot in North Carolina on Saturday. Police in Kannapolis say that Welch was a passenger in a GMC Yukon an officer pulled over because he knew it was usually driven by Welch. The officer had arrested Welch in the past, the Charlotte Observer reports, and was aware Welch “had an outstanding warrant for his arrest for a felony probation violation.” Two other officers stopped to assist. Welch, the cops say, brandished a handgun when approached by the first officer, and two cops fired at him after, they say, he didn’t comply with “repeated requests” to drop the weapon. He died in a hospital two days later, the Observer reports. Welch visited DC in 2016 to “investigate” Comet Ping Pong in Chevy Chase, which a bizarre conspiracy theory had posited as not a family-friendly pizza spot that hosts late-night indie rock gigs, but rather the center of a pedophilia ring that reached the highest levels of US politics. He entered the restaurant toting a loaded AR-15, then searched the restaurant for an entryway to its basement, which the theory held was where the cabal kept its dungeon. (Comet has no basement.) He fired several shots into a door and spent 20 more fruitless minutes in the restaurant chasing confirmation of the conspiracy theory before he left, unarmed, and was arrested. Welch faced charges of interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition and assault with a dangerous weapon. He pleaded guilty the following March and received a four-year sentence. He was released in 2020. Welch’s Washington adventure was an early harbinger of the new era the DC entered when Donald Trump won a surprising victory in 2016. Trump still associates with people who pushed the Pizzagate theory. He’ll be inaugurated for a second term in 11 days.The post Comet Ping Pong Gunman Shot Dead by Police in North Carolina first appeared on Washingtonian.