This #PizzaGate shit just blew up....
https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/12/04/man-with-rifle-arrested-at-comet-ping-pong/Man With Gun Arrested at Comet Ping PongPolice say he fired one shot into the ground but made no verbal threats. DC police arrested a man who allegedly walked through the Comet Ping Pong restaurant in Chevy Chase with a gun on Sunday afternoon. The man, who was not identified, entered the pizza restaurant a little before 3 PM and proceeded to walk toward the back room where some patrons were playing table tennis. Other businesses in the neighborhood, including Politics & Prose, were locked down as police swarmed the block.
The gunman, who a witness described as a tall blond male who appeared to be in his early 20s. Police said he fired at least one shot into the ground, but no injuries have been reported. The restaurant’s staff moved quickly to call the police and evacuate the restaurant. In a tweet, police described the weapon as an “assault rifle.”
“A lot of us saw he had a gun and we all started getting our families out,” says Sharif Silmi, a Maryland lawyer who was at the restaurant with his wife and three children. “The staff came and got us.”
Matt Carr owns Little Red Fox, a cafe and coffeeshop next door to Comet. Carr was making sandwiches when a couple of Comet Ping Pong waiters rushed in his cafe and market and told him to lock the doors. They’d seen the man with a gun blow past the host stand and head to the back of the restaurant. He didn’t say a word to anyone from what they could tell.
With two to three minutes, Carr saw at least seven to nine police cars swarm the restaurant. Twenty to 30 people huddled in the center of his store away from the glass windows.
“There was a dad with his three-year-old daughter. I was just trying to monitor the situation, and I saw police officers hiding behind their cars waiting to see what was going to happen,” Carr says.
Carr estimates they were on lockdown for about an hour. He got a text from Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis saying everyone was OK next door.
During the election season Comet became the unlikely center of a far-right conspiracy theory predicated on hacked e-mails from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The restaurant, which also hosts music shows, announced on Thursday it would add security to its music shows following intense, mostly remotely conducted harassment of the venue and its employees.
https://archive.fo/y70nr#selection-1121.1-1157.88
The “PizzaGate” conspiracy theory spread on social media, including Facebook and Twitter, and on Reddit, until it was banned from discussion on that website.
The owners and employees of the Comet Ping Pong pizza place told the New York Times they received threats because of the debunked theory, which many have said was spread as “fake news” (EDIT: this didn't break until the week of the election) to try to bring down Hillary Clinton and her campaign.
“From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we’ve come under constant assault,” James Alefantis, Comet’s owner, told the Times in a November 21 report. “I’ve done nothing for days but try to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized.”
Comet’s general manager Bryan Reh told the Times, “It’s like trying to shoot a swarm of bees with one gun,” of the threats and messages he and the restaurant were receiving on social media.http://heavy.com/news/2016/12/edgar-maddison-welch-comet-pizza-pizzagate-washington-dc-gunman-suspect-photos-pictures-facebook-conspiracy-north-carolina/EDIT: The dude has an IMDb page...
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2625901/?ref_=tt_ov_wr
