A man has been arrested for entering a pizza restaurant with an assault rifle - apparently to "self-investigate" a US election conspiracy theory.

Police said Edgar Maddison Welch, 28, walked into Comet Ping Pong in Washington DC and pointed the gun at an employee.

The worker and customers managed to flee and raise the alarm - with businesses going into lockdown after police were called just before 3pm.

According to police, Welch, from North Carolina, fired the weapon in the restaurant but no-one is believed to have been hurt.

He has since been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.


Police said he told them he had travelled to the popular family restaurant to probe "Pizzagate" - a fake news conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton that spread online during the campaign.

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The restaurant's owners and employees have been threatened since the bogus stories were published claiming Mrs Clinton and her campaign chief were running a child sex ring from its back rooms.

President-elect Donald Trump's national security adviser Michael Flynn, a retired general, was among those who shared the stories.

The restaurant's owner had to contact the FBI, local police, Facebook and social media bosses in an effort to remove the offending article.

Matt Carr, owner of the nearby Little Red Fox market - who also received threats, told the Washington Post: "This was our worst fear - that someone would read all this and come to the block with a gun, And today it happened."

Gareth Wade, 47, who was sitting down for pizza and beer when the man entered the restaurant, told the paper: "The server said someone just walked in with a shotgun."

He said the server told them: "A man had just walked into the building, passed us into the back of the building, he seemed to have a shotgun or a rifle-type of (gun) and said we ought to vacate the building."