'Pizzagate' conspiracy theorist gets four years in prison
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Source: Associated Press
Edgar Welch fired an assault rifle inside a Washington pizza restaurant, believing internet rumors that prominent Democrats were harboring child sex slaves there
Associated Press
Thursday 22 June 2017 21.17 EDT
An online conspiracy theory dubbed “pizzagate” ended Thursday with real-world consequences when a North Carolina man was sentenced to prison for arming himself with an assault rifle, traveling to the nation’s capital and firing his weapon inside a neighborhood pizza restaurant.
Edgar Maddison Welch’s “ill-conceived plot” last year did “actual damage to the lives of real people”, a judge said before sentencing him to four years in prison.
Judge Ketanji B Jackson said she had never seen a case like Welch’s, and she gave him a punishment on the upper end of guidelines, in part to send a message to others.
If Welch believed an internet conspiracy theory that children were being harmed at the restaurant, he should have notified law enforcement, not attempted to take the law into his own hands, the judge said during Thursday’s hearing in US district court in Washington.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/22/pizzagate-conspiracy-theorist-prison-sentence-washington
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