White House dinner shooting: Who is suspect Cole Tomas Allen?
Law enforcement personnel detain Cole Tomas Allen, a suspect in the shooting incident at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, in Washington, D.C., U.S. April 25, 2026. PHOTO | REUTERS
Washington. The suspect arrested in the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting on Saturday has been identified by a law enforcement official as Cole Tomas Allen, a Los Angeles-area man who appears, based on social media, to be a Caltech graduate working as a part-time teacher and game developer.
The official said Allen, approximately 31 years old, is a resident of Torrance, California, a coastal town in the South Bay area adjacent to Los Angeles and bordering Santa Monica Bay.
The chief of the District of Columbia police department said investigators believe the suspect was a guest at the Washington Hilton hotel, where the annual dinner was taking place, but no motive has yet been determined.
Facebook posts appearing to relate to Allen show he was named “Teacher of the Month” in December 2024 by the Torrance office of C2 Education, a nationwide private test-preparation and tutoring service for college-bound students.
A LinkedIn profile in the suspect's name describes him as a “mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth.”
According to the profile, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2017 and a master’s degree in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 2025. Caltech confirmed in a statement that a person of that name graduated in 2017.
Under job experience, the profile shows he has worked for several years as a part-time teacher for C2 Education and as a self-employed game developer. He previously worked as a mechanical engineer for IJK Controls in South Pasadena and as a teaching assistant at Caltech.
The profile also includes a local newspaper article on a robotics competition his team won at Caltech in 2016. Under “Causes,” it lists only “Science and Technology.”
Authorities said the suspect attempted to breach security at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The Secret Service said he was armed with a shotgun and was taken into custody after opening fire at an agent inside the Washington Hilton Hotel, outside the ballroom where the event was attended by President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance and several cabinet secretaries.
