Thomson Reuters

· Posted: Apr 26, 2026 5:23 AM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours ago

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 old, is a resident of Torrance, Calif., 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 ⁠Allen 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."

WATCH | 'It was very quick,' Trump says of security response at correspondents' dinner:

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.

WATCH | Trump posts security video of suspect running in hotel:

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.

Under "Causes," it lists only: "Science and Technology."

The U.S. Secret Service said ⁠the suspect was armed with a shotgun and taken into custody after opening fire at a Secret Service agent in the hotel, outside the ballroom where the event was attended by President Donald Trump, his wife Melania, Vice-President JD Vance and several ⁠cabinet secretaries.

It was not immediately clear whether Trump was the target of the attack, though the U.S. president told reporters he believed that he was.

Trump, who called Allen a "sick guy," also claimed that Allen wrote manifesto containing anti-Christian sentiment, and that his family previously expressed concerns about him to law enforcement officials.

WATCH | Suspect was teacher and game developer: