An Ohio man is facing criminal charges after he allegedly stormed a stage at a Wikipedia conference in New York City with a gun – as well as a sign declaring himself a “non-offending pedophile” – and threatened to kill himself.
Connor Weston, 27, was reportedly tackled by organizers of WikiConference North America 2025, thwarting tragedy, before police said officers booked him on counts of criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment.
The Dayton resident had evidently paid to attend the four-day conference when he disrupted its opening ceremony at 9am Friday in Manhattan’s Civic Hall. He jumped on to a stage at the venue, pointed a gun at his head and the ceiling, and expressed a desire to take his life while a sign draped around his neck declared him to be an “anti-contact non-offending pedophile”, police and multiple media reports said.
According to the New York Times, conference safety team member Richard Knipel rushed the stage and clutched Weston from behind amid the chaos.
The Times wrote that another conference safety team member, Andrew Lih, soon went up to help Knipel.
“I grabbed his arm,” Lih told the outlet. “He was still clutching his gun pretty hard. I pried his fingers away from it, removed it from his hands and put it down.”
A police spokesperson said that officers took Weston into custody after receiving multiple 911 calls. There were no injuries reported.
The Times reported that conference attenders thanked Knipel by lavishing him with Barnstars, which are Wikipedia’s official tokens of appreciation.
The chief of the non-profit group that runs Wikipedia, Maryana Iskander, reportedly told the crowd that Knipel and Lih “have been very busy”. “I thank them for saving my life,” she added.
Knipel works for City University of New York, tasked with making its research more publicly accessible while contributing to Wikipedia and sites that are related to the famed online encyclopedia curated in real time by volunteers. Cuny in March referred to Knipel on its website as its first “Wikemedian-in-residence”, saying his job is funded by philanthropic funding from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark.
Meanwhile, the Times described Lih as a digital strategist who works with museums and libraries.
Wikipedia canceled the rest of the conference’s events Friday. The gathering resumed Saturday.
Friday was apparently not the first time Weston had publicly labeled himself an “anti contact, non offending pedophile”. A social media video circulated in July shows a man providing Weston’s name, age and home town; applying that term to himself; and saying he can “choose not to harm minors … but can’t choose to stop being attracted to them”.
The man in the clip matched the likeness of Weston as seen in a photo taken Friday while police put him in the back of a patrol car after his arrest. In both Friday’s photo and the earlier video, he had the same “anti-contact non-offending pedophile” sign.
As NBC News noted, Johns Hopkins University defines non-offending pedophiles as “a unique population of individuals who experience sexual interest in children, but despite common misperceptions, have neither had sexual contact with a child nor have accessed illegal child sexual exploitation material”.
Wikipedia has a rule indefinitely blocking and banning from the platform any editors “who identify themselves as pedophiles”.
