The suspect arrested in the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting on Saturday was identified by a law enforcement official as Cole Tomas Allen, a Los Angeles-area man who appears from social media sites to be a Caltech graduate working as a part-time teacher and game developer.
The official said Allen, approximately 31 years of age, is a resident of Torrance, California, a coastal town that is part of the South Bay area adjacent to Los Angeles abutting 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 that no motive had been determined.
Facebook postings appearing to relate to Cole show that 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.”
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 at Dominguez Hills in 2025, according to the profile. Caltech said in a statement that a person of that name graduated in 2017.
Under job experience, the post shows he has worked for the past 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 a company called IJK Controls in South Pasadena for a year before that as a Caltech teaching assistant.
The profile also includes a local newspaper article “on a robotics competition my team won” at Caltech in 2016.
The Secret Service said the suspect was armed with a shotgun and was taken into custody after opening fire at a Secret Service agent in the Washington Hilton Hotel, outside the ballroom.
President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and key Cabinet officials were evacuated from the White House Correspondents Dinner after shots had been fired outside the ballroom where the event was being held Saturday night.
Journalists were told to get on the ground, get under the tables, and hide for approximately five minutes at the Washington Hilton. Many of the 2,600 attendees took cover under their tables amid confusion as Secret Service agents in combat gear entered the dining room and scoped the perimeter.
The Secret Service released a statement on the incident.
“The U.S. Secret Service, in coordination with the Metropolitan Police Department, is investigating a shooting incident near the main magnetometer screening area at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” Anthony Guglielmi, Secret Service communications chief, wrote. “The president and the first lady are safe along [with] all protectees. One individual is in custody.”
Trump called on Americans to “recommit” to resolve their differences peacefully.
“As you know, this is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin who sought to kill,” the president said in a press conference after announcing that law enforcement had apprehended the shooter.
“In Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two years ago—you all know that story—and in Palm Beach, Florida, a few months after that,” he faced assassination attempts, Trump noted. “In light of this evening’s events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts and resolving our differences peacefully.”
The Daily Signal’s Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell and Tyler O’Neil contributed to this reporting, along with Reuters’ Steve Gorman in Los Angeles.
