{"id":311808,"date":"2025-10-17T22:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T22:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/311808\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T22:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T22:14:10","slug":"armed-man-wearing-non-offending-pedophile-sign-storms-stage-at-nyc-wikipedia-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/311808\/","title":{"rendered":"Armed man wearing ‘non-offending pedophile’ sign storms stage at NYC Wikipedia conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Wikipedia conference in New York City took a bizarre turn Friday after an Ohio man draped in a sign declaring him to be an \u201canti-contact non-offending pedophile\u201d got on <\/strong>stage with a gun and threatened to kill himself. <\/p>\n

WikiConference North America 2025 kicked off at 9 a.m. at Civic Hall, a community center in Manhattan. During the opening ceremony, a man with a gun jumped onto the stage and pointed his weapon at the ceiling before being tackled by conference organizers, according to police and a Wikipedia spokesperson.<\/p>\n

The man, whom police did not identify, was later taken into custody, the Wikipedia spokesperson said. <\/p>\n

The man wore a multicolored sign around his neck that read “anti-contact non-offending pedophile,” according to law enforcement sources familiar with the matter. The sign bore the colors of a flag that has been used in recent years by people who identify as “MAPs,” or “minor-attracted persons.”<\/p>\n

He also had the flag representing “MAPs” draped on his back containing the same message. <\/p>\n

According to John Hopkins University<\/a>, nonoffending pedophiles “are 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.”<\/p>\n

The incident, and a possible motive, remain under investigation. <\/p>\n

Wikipedia canceled all events Friday “due to unforeseen circumstances,” adding that the conference is expected to resume Saturday, the online encyclopedia said on its website. <\/p>\n

In a statement, Wikipedia said that conference participants are safe and that it thanks those who stepped in to help Friday.<\/p>\n

“The rest of today\u2019s program is cancelled, and there will be additional security as well as law enforcement onsite for the remainder of the event,” it said.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia would not share if the man was affiliated with the online encyclopedia in any way. The conference started on Thursday and will end on Sunday, per Wikipedia’s website. <\/p>\n

WikiConference North America is an annual conference organized “by and for Wikipedia editors, enthusiasts, and volunteers,” according to their website<\/a>. The first conference was hosted in New York City in 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Wikipedia conference in New York City took a bizarre turn Friday after an Ohio man draped in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":311809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-311808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115391815453891742","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}