Washington, D.C
Man at the center of Washington DC ‘Pizzagate’ killed during North Carolina traffic stop
‘Pizzagate’ gunman killed by police in North Carolina
Edgar Maddison Welch, the ‘Pizzagate’ suspect who stormed Comet Pizza in D.C. in 2016, was shot and killed by police in North Carolina last week.
Fox – 5 DC
The man who stormed into a Washington D.C. restaurant with loaded weapons during an incident widely known as “Pizzagate” is now dead after North Carolina police shot him during a traffic stop.
Edgar Maddison Welch, 36, was shot just after 10 p.m. last Saturday, Kannapolis Fire and Police wrote in a news release this week.
Welch is the same Salisbury, North Carolina man who in December 2016, showed up to Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington DC., with loaded weapons to investigate “unfounded rumors concerning a child sex-trafficking ring” that was allegedly operating out of the restaurant, federal prosecutors said.
He pleaded guilty in March 2017 to a federal charge of interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition, as well as a District of Columbia charge of assault with a dangerous weapon.
Three months later, he was sentenced to four years in prison.
What is ‘Pizzagate’? What happened at Comet Ping Pong?
Welch’s initial reason for making headlines in 2016 stemmed from rumors of a child sex trafficking ring allegedly operating out of the pizza restaurant he stormed into, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia.
Rumors began circulating online that the restaurant was part of a trafficking ring operated by then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton – a fake news campaign targeting Clinton during the general election.
Welch allegedly tried to recruit people to participate in the storming of the restaurant leading up to Dec. 4. He’d texted someone saying he was “raiding a pedo ring” and sacrificing “the lives of a few for the lives of many.”
Prosecutors said Welch traveled from North Carolina to Washington D.C. with three loaded firearms, including a 9mm AR-15 assault rifle loaded with 29 rounds of ammunition, a fully-loaded, six-shot, .38-caliber revolver and a loaded shotgun with additional shotgun shells.
Welch parked his car and around 3 p.m., walked into the restaurant, where multiple employees and customers were present, including children, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia said in a news release.
“He was carrying the AR-15 openly, with one hand on the pistol grip, and the other hand on the hand guard around the barrel, such that anyone with an unobstructed view could see the gun,” the office wrote in the news release.
Once customers and employees saw Welch, they fled the building. Welch was also accused of trying to get into a locked room by forcing the door open, first with a butter knife and then shooting his assault rifle multiple times into the door.
Shortly after he walked into the restaurant, an employee who had no idea what was going on walked in carrying pizza dough, federal prosecutors said. When Welch saw the employee, he turned toward the worker with the assault rifle, which made the employee think he was going to shoot them. The employee then ran out, leaving Welch alone in the restaurant.
Welch spent more than 20 minutes inside the restaurant, then walked out, leaving his firearms inside. Officials then arrested him.
When Welch was sentenced to four years in prison, he was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release, during which he’d have to get a mental health assessment.
He was also ordered to stay away from the Comet Ping Pong restaurant while released and to pay $5,744 in restitution for property damage.
What happened leading up to the Welch’s death?
The deadly traffic stop happened the night of Jan. 4, said Kannapolis Chief of Police Terry L. Spry in a news release.
Around 10 p.m., a Kannapolis Police Officer patrolling North Cannon Boulevard spotted a gray 2001 GMC Yukon. The officer recognized the vehicle because he’d previously arrested someone who frequently drove the vehicle, Welch. He also knew Welch had an outstanding warrant for his arrest, police said.
The officer stopped the vehicle and recognized the front seat passenger as Welch, who had an outstanding arrest warrant for felony probation violation, police said. While the officer was speaking with Welch, two additional officers showed up to help.
As the officer who made the traffic stop approached the passenger side of the vehicle and opened the front passenger door to arrest the individual, the passenger pulled out a handgun and pointed it at the officer.
The initial officer and a second officer who was standing at the rear passenger side of the Yukon ordered the man to drop the gun. After the passenger failed to lower his gun, both officers fired at him, hitting him.
Officials called for medical assistance for Welch who was taken to a hospital for treatment. He was later taken to another hospital, where he died from his injuries two days after the shooting.
None of the officers at the traffic stop were hurt and neither were the driver and back seat passenger in the vehicle with Welch.
The officers involved who fired their weapons were Officer Brooks Jones and Officer Caleb Tate. The third officer at the scene did not fire his weapon, police said.
District Attorney will decide next steps in traffic stop shooting death
An outside law enforcement agency has been requested to investigate the shooting.
“This practice ensures there is no bias during the investigation and the findings of the investigation are presented to the District Attorney without any influence by a member of the department,” the police chief wrote in the news release.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is still investigating the shooting and the two officers who fired their weapons are on administrative leave, which the police said is standard protocol.
Cabarrus County District Attorney Ashlie Shanley will decide what the next steps are, police said.
Contributing: Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
Saleen Martin is a reporter on USA TODAY’s NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Follow her on Twitter at @SaleenMartin or email her at sdmartin@usatoday.com.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Seventy-two veterans took a trip Saturday to our nation’s capital to visit memorials honoring their service in the armed forces.
This year marks the 12th trip to Washington, D.C. for Honor Flight Tallahassee.
Early Saturday morning, veterans and their guardians met to take a charter flight up to D.C.
Throughout the day, veterans were taken to the World War II memorial, as well as the Korean and Vietnam War memorials. The veterans also visited Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
More Tallahassee news:
The day ended with a wonderful welcome home celebration.
Our Jacob Murphey, Julia Miller, Taylor Viles, and Grace Temple accompanied the veterans, capturing moments from throughout the day.
The team will have live coverage from Washington, D.C. on Monday to share more from the day’s events.
We will continue to have coverage throughout the month of May, leading up to our Honor Flight special on Memorial Day.
To keep up with the latest news as it develops, follow WCTV on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Nextdoor and X (Twitter).
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4 things to know about the weather:
- Chances of rain in the morning
- Gusty Sunday
- Chilly Monday
- Temps will rise again through the work week
Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.
After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.
The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.
Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.
However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.
QuickCast
SUNDAY:
Showers, then partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 30 mph
HIGH: Lower 60s
MONDAY:
Partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 25 mph
HIGH: Upper 50s
Stay with Storm Team4 for the latest forecast. Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to get severe weather alerts on your phone.
Washington, D.C
‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington
The most severe energy shock since the 1970s, the risk of a global recession and households everywhere stomaching a renewed surge in the cost of living – hitting the most vulnerable hardest.
In a sweltering hot Washington DC this week, the message at the International Monetary Fund meetings was chilling: things had been looking up for living standards around the world. But then came the Iran war.
“Some countries are in panic,” said the fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, addressing the finance ministers and central bank bosses in town for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. “The sooner it [the Iran war] ends, the better for everybody.”
Such gatherings are not typically used to fight geopolitical battles. “You don’t get people shouting at one another at these things,” one senior figure remarked. But, as a record-breaking April heatwave swept the US capital, no one could ignore the mounting damage from the Iran war.
Those familiar with the mood over breakfast at a meeting of the G20’s representatives on Thursday, which included Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – said the atmosphere in the room was sombre amid an open exchange of serious views.
“It is such a twilight-zone meeting,” said Mohamed El-Erian, a former IMF deputy managing director who is now chief economic adviser at the Allianz insurance group. “There are several shadows hanging over it: one is the shadow that comes from concern about the global economy as a whole.
“The second is that some countries are going to be particularly hard hit, and it’s mostly countries that very few people are talking about. But the third concern is the adding of insult to injury: the fact that the US, which started a war of choice, is going to be hit, but by a lot less than elsewhere in relative terms.”
Before Thursday’s breakfast, Rachel Reeves had started her day with an early-morning jog. Joined by her counterparts from Spain, Australia and New Zealand for a run down the iconic National Mall, she posted an Instagram selfie with a not-so-subtle dig: “Friends that run together – work together.”
A day earlier, the chancellor had told a CNBC conference that she thought “friends are allowed to disagree on things” as she criticised Trump’s Iran war as a “mistake” and a “folly” that had not made the world safer.
Speaking at a venue just steps away from the White House, before a one-on-one meeting with Bessent, she said this “fair message” was needed because UK families and businesses were feeling the pain from higher energy prices triggered by the conflict.
Those close to Reeves insist her meeting remained cordial. Britain and the US have significant shared interests in AI, financial services and trade. The chancellor also said the UK government had little time for the Iranian regime.
But with the IMF having warned on Tuesday that the Iran war could risk a global recession – in which Britain would be the biggest G7 casualty – it was clear Reeves had travelled to Washington ready to pick a fight.
“I’m struck by how vocal she has been and the words she used,” said one global financier. “We know the disagreement between Bessent and [European Central Bank president] Christine Lagarde earlier in the year. But that was in private.”
At a cocktail party held at the British ambassador’s residence for hundreds of diplomats and financiers – including the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, and dozens of senior figures – this transatlantic tension, weeks before King Charles’s US state visit, was a major topic of conversation.
The other, in the balmy residence gardens, was one of its former occupants, Peter Mandelson, as revelations about the former ambassador’s appointment threatened to further rock the UK government.
Before the war, the agenda for the IMF had been about global cooperation; the adoption of AI, jobs and work to eradicate poverty. Each of those tasks had now been complicated, but not least the task of countries working together.
For many at the meetings, the focus was on forging closer global cooperation without the world’s pre-eminent superpower.
“Everybody is talking about how you hedge against American decisions,” said David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who now runs the International Rescue Committee. “You can’t do without them, because they’re 25% of the global economy. But, in a lot of fora, they’ve pulled out.
“So everyone has to think, how does one structure international cooperation? The old west is not coming back. And so everyone has to figure out how to position themselves for that world.”
For those gathering in Washington, there was irony in the fact that they were meeting in the halls of institutions founded, under US leadership, to promote global cooperation after the second world war. The whole idea of the Bretton Woods institutions was to avoid the dire economic conditions and warfare of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet this year’s meeting was taking place amid these intertwining problems.
In their conversations about the best economic policy response to the shock of conflict, the economists also knew the real power to make a difference lay two blocks across town from the IMF and the World Bank – behind the security cordons and construction equipment blocking the White House from public view. “It is not clear they can do anything about it,” said El-Erian.
Still, with a booming economy driven by AI – including Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, the topic of much conversation – most countries cannot afford to completely break off US ties.
“People want to find ways to insulate themselves from the mess. But, on the other hand, they admire the US private sector,” El-Erian said. “The best way I’ve heard it put, is: they want to go long the private sector and short the mess. But it’s almost impossible to do.”
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