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 about 3 PM and proceeded to walk toward the back room where some patrons were playing table tennis.
The gunman, who a witness described as a tall blond male who appeared to be in his early 20s, did not fire his weapon, and no injuries have been reported. The restaurant’s staff moved quickly to call the police and evacuate the restaurant.
“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.”
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.
“There have been no hostile situations at the venue, and we do not anticipate any altercations as much of the harassment has occurred online, but as a precaution we now have security and police present at every show,” Comet wrote on its Facebook page. The venue did not have any music events scheduled for Sunday.
Silmi says his family stopped by Comet Ping Pong as part of a day trip to Chevy Chase that also included plans to stop by Politics and Prose and the Little Red Fox bakery, Comet Ping Pong’s neighboring businesses on its homey block of Connecticut Ave., Northwest, which have caught some spillover flak from Pizzagate conspiracy theorists.
Police, who Silmi says arrived about two to three minutes after the gunman entered the restaurant, have not released the suspect’s name.
Silmi says that since the November 8 election, he and his family, who are Muslim, have felt a bit more cautious.
You’re a little bit more on guard, ” he says. “We stick to areas that are fairly progressive, multicultural. I’ve been overseas quite a bit in the Middle East. You’re on guard there. Chevy Chase, You don’t expect it.”
