A man in an orange sweatshirt rushed the stage. He was not in law enforcement, but a Wikipedia contributor on the conference’s “trust and safety team”: Richard Knipel, the
City University of New York’s “Wikimedian-in-residence.” He grabbed the gunman from behind. Another Wikipedian on the trust and safety team, Andrew Lih, had been standing watch in the aisle and charged forward, too. “I saw the gun he’s holding go from pointing up at the ceiling to sweeping down toward the room, and as it swept across me I said ‘Oh, my god,’ and I ducked down, but I still kept moving” said Mr. Lih, a digital strategist who works with museums and libraries.“I grabbed his arm,” he continued. “He was still clutching his gun pretty hard. I pried his fingers away from it, removed it from his hands and put it down.”The gun was loaded, according to a senior law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a pending investigation.