Downtown Salisbury, the hometown of Edgar Welch, sits decorated for the upcoming holiday. (Logan R. Cyrus/for The Washington Post)

When a man from this small city was arrested as he apparently set out to liberate imaginary children from a fake pedophile ring at a Washington, D.C., pizza place, the incident quickly became national news. But most people here were focused on crimes closer to home.

It was Sunday afternoon when Edgar Maddison Welch carried an assault rifle into Comet Ping Pong in a wealthy section of the nation’s capital, drawn by a viral fake news story of a child sex ring linked to Hillary Clinton, court papers said. No one was hurt, but police said Welch fired his weapon at a door.

Hours earlier in Salisbury, a city of about 34,000, three people were killed. One was a 7-year-old girl hit by a stray bullet; her grandmother was also wounded. One longtime local reporter called it “Hell night,” the worst he had seen in 25 years.

“You never hear Salisbury or Rowan County,” said Don Vick, who owns a candy store downtown. “And then all of a sudden — ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.”

For locals, the news is especially painful because they believe Salisbury, about 50 miles north of Charlotte, should stand out not for violence, but for tolerance and creativity. When the Ku Klux Klan announced plans to hold a victory rally in North Carolina last weekend, city residents responded with a “March for Love.” The small and vibrant downtown boasts theaters, independent bookstores and a string of artist studios set up in an old railroad depot.

Seth Holtzman (right) and his daughter Ava Haltzman sit inside Koco Java in downtown Salisbury to catch up on current events such as the story involved in Edgar Welch. (Logan R. Cyrus/for The Washington Post)

Still, the area struggles with high rates of poverty as well as drug abuse and crime. As manufacturing has declined, the city has had trouble keeping houses occupied and persuading educated residents to stay.

Just down the street from the artist studios, Darrell Brown was relaxing Tuesday afternoon with friends over coffee at Main Street’s long and cozy Koco Java.

“This isn’t a bad place,” said Brown, 57. “But we have our share of crazies. If there’s a city you shouldn’t go to packing an arsenal, it’s Washington, D.C.”

An X-ray technician at Rowan Medical Center, Brown also plays guitar at open-mic nights around town, although he says Salisbury’s local music scene is not as robust as its theater community. Later that evening he planned to attend a Christmas play at the Lee Street Theatre, just around the corner.

Brown didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton and thinks she’s crooked. “But I don’t think she’s that stupid,” he said of the rumor that police said provoked Welch to drive from Salisbury to Washington looking for evidence of a child sex ring run by the Democratic presidential nominee.

One friend, 53-year-old teaching assistant Cindy Smith Bernhardt, said she was more distressed by the local murders than the faraway shooting that left no one hurt. Seth Holtzman, a philosophy professor at nearby Catawba College, hadn’t heard about Welch at all. Like several locals, he had stopped following the news after Donald Trump’s election.

An amateur photographer, Holtzman was planning a portrait of Smith Bernhardt’s falcon.

Edgar Maddison Welch, 28, walked into D.C. pizza restaurant Comet Ping Pong armed with an assault rifle on Dec. 4, apparently to "investigate" a fake internet conspiracy. Here's what we know about him so far. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)

“It could have been anybody from any state. It’s disappointing that it was a doofus from here,” Holtzman said of Welch. “Now the whole country is going to think North Carolina is a whole bunch of gun-toting hicks.”

Still, he said he wasn’t surprised. Salisbury proper is diverse and politically left-leaning, he said — he wore a T-shirt from a 2011 gay pride parade. But the surrounding county is rural and more conservative. Welch was living in the home of his late grandmother on the outskirts of town.

Don Vick and his wife, Nancy, are Republicans active in the Rowan County party. They saw Welch’s alleged actions not as political, but a product of emotional problems, although they understood why Trump fired from his transition team a member who spread the Comet Ping Pong conspiracy.

“He has to distance himself from all these conspiracy theories,” Don Vick said.

But Salisbury, they agreed, was a welcoming and forward-looking place. Natives of Chicago and Boston, respectively, Don and Nancy found other small Southern cities downright hostile to newcomers. In Salisbury, they were embraced.

“They want to be open, they want to grow,” Nancy Vick, 62, said. Nearby colleges, she believed, fueled the open atmosphere. At the Candy Shoppe, the couple stock foreign candy for international students and chart the array on a giant wall map.

But the town is also the kind of place where they can hire a clerk they have known since she was 7 years old, simply by calling her parents.

“It’s a small town, a Southern town, with great people,” said Don Vick, 67. The store, opened in 2013, was his retirement dream after three decades working for a candy manufacturing company.

The Vicks, like many other locals, knew of the Welch family. Edgar Welch’s father is the county’s former register of deeds. His grandfather owned a local radio station, served as a county commissioner and was a local football star. Neighbors pointed out that the road to the Welchs’ compound of homes is paved, which is unusual for the area.

Welch’s parents have not commented publicly. An aunt has described Edgar Welch as a devoted father and said the family was shocked by the news.

“These people who have done so much good for the community, now there’s a black cloud over them,” Nancy Vick said. She said some locals were unfairly suggesting that the 28-year-old Edgar Welch’s family deserved some blame for his behavior.

“It’s not fair to the parents to be tormented,” she said.

Neither the owner nor the clerks at the nearby Queen’s Gifts had heard anything about the gun-toting vigilante. Like Holtzman, all three were inclined to tune out the news after Election Day.

Susanna Hollingsworth, a 49-year-old painter who works at the store, suggested the news could be worse.

“He was deranged, but at least he was thinking about the kids,” she said with a grimace and a shrug. “Still, it’s not exactly an inspiring Christmas story, is it?”