WASHINGTON (AP) A man who said he was investigating a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of a pizza place fired an assault rifle inside the Washington, D.C., restaurant on Sunday injuring no one, police and news reports said.
Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman Aquita Brown said police received a call Sunday afternoon about a male with a weapon on Connecticut Avenue, in an affluent neighborhood of the nation’s capital.
Edgar Maddison Welch, 28 of Salisbury, North Carolina, walked into the front door of Comet Ping Pong and pointed a firearm in the direction of a restaurant employee, the Washington Post (http://wapo.st/2gERkPC) reported.
The employee was able to flee and notify police. Welch then fired the gun into the floor.
Police responded and arrested Welch without incident. They recovered an “assault rifle,” Brown said. Welch was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.
Two firearms were recovered inside the restaurant and an additional weapon was recovered from the suspect’s vehicle, police said in a statement on Sunday evening.
The Comet Ping Pong is in a neighborhood of well-tended private homes and apartment buildings on leafy streets that lead to a mix of shops, restaurants and the Politics and Prose book store. The restaurant gained notoriety during the presidential campaign after fake news stories stated that Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief ran a child sex ring out of the restaurant, The New York Times and other news organizations have reported.
Welch told police he’d come to the restaurant to “self-investigate” the fictitious online conspiracy theory that spread online during Clinton’s run for the White House, the police statement said.
The Comet, its owner, staff and nearby businesses were caught up in an onslaught of conspiracy theories and fake news during the often contentious presidential campaign and were the victims social media attacks and death threats, the Post reported.
James Alefantis, owner of Comet Ping Pong, released a statement late Sunday night that denied what he called the “malicious and utterly false accusations” and said the company hoped to resume normal operations within a few days.
“I hope that those involved in fanning these flames will take a moment to contemplate what happened here today, and stop promoting these falsehoods right away,” Alefantis said in the statement.
It’s clear that Trumpers not only don’t live on the same planet as the rest of us but they inhabit an entirely different parallel reality. That will continue to cause increased friction and will lead (or already has led) to what in marital relationships is referred to as “irreconcilable differences”.
The crazy Trumpers won’t go away quietly, and the GOP does not want to realize that getting all of the power with a minority of votes is a highly unstable situation. So what’s going to happen long term? Break-up of the US? Civil war? Or “only” several years of insanity followed by a Democratic administration trying to prevent the economy from imploding, and then getting blamed for all the problems? Interesting times indeed.
I applaud the man for the effort. Next time less gun, more thinking, please…
Well, at least there aren’t many unhinged people like this around who actually believe some of the stuff on Brietbart, Alex Jones, FOX, or that the President-elect says. That could be a real problem.
Yes sir, Ireland is looking better and better all the time…
Good pizza. No child sex. Or perhaps I didn’t have the secret code to get into the nonexistent basement where the children are allegedly kept.