Photo by Julie Strupp.

The man who fired his gun inside a popular Northwest pizzeria, as he “self-investigated” a widely debunked conspiracy theory, was sentenced to four years in prison today.

Edgar Maddison Welch pleaded guilty to two weapons charges in March. He apologized in a court filing last week, in which he asked for 18 months; prosecutors sought 4.5 years.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said that “the extent of the recklessness in this case is breathtaking.”

The now-29 year old Welch told police he drove from North Carolina to Comet Ping Pong on December 4 because he “”read online that the Comet restaurant was harboring child sex slaves and that he wanted to see for himself if they were there … [He] stated he was armed to help rescue them.”

Welch entered the pizzeria that Sunday afternoon with an AR-15 assault rifle and a revolver. The restaurant was evacuated in a panic. He pointed the AR-15 at an employee and fired the gun multiple times, causing damage to the restaurant—part of the plea deal involves paying $5,744 in damages to Comet Ping Pong. No one was injured, which Jackson called “sheer luck.”

Ultimately, though, Welch did not find any Satanic sex rings in the basement of Comet Ping Pong, because the restaurant does not have a basement. (InfoWars host and longtime conspiracy theorist Alex Jones ultimately apologized to Comet and owner James Alefantis for his role in promoting the theory.) “The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent,” Welch told The New York Times in an interview from jail. He has been in custody since the incident.

The Chevy Chase pizzeria faced a deluge of harassment since shortly before the 2016 election, leading them to increase security. While the D.C. community rallied around the restaurant, prosecutors argued that Welch’s shooting has “traumatized Comet employees and customers alike. There are victims who require crisis counseling, employees who feel unsafe in their jobs, and children whose memories are imprinted with the danger of that day,” Assistant US Attorney Demian Ahn wrote.

Welch said in a letter to the court last week that “It was never my intention to harm or frighten innocent lives, but I realize now just how foolish and reckless my decision was.”

“This gunman will spend years in jail, and I will try to rebuild my life and my name and my business,” Alefantis, Comet Ping Pong’s owner, told reporters, per The Huffington Post. “I think that there are many other people who have pushed this conspiracy theory, who have created enormous amounts of harm to all of our community who have so far not been held accountable, and have not apologized for the damage and the harm that they’ve done.”

After his prison term, Welch will have three years of supervised release, during which he will receive a mental health assessment. He is also ordered to stay away from Comet Ping Pong.

This post has been updated.