Suspect in White House Correspondents' Dinner Shooting ID'd as Calif. Tutor, CS Graduate

Secret Service agents tackled and arrested a man who breached a security checkpoint and fired a weapon at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington on Saturday night, striking one officer whose bulletproof vest stopped the round. The incident marked an extraordinary security breach at one of the capital's most high-profile annual events.

The suspect, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, is in federal custody, according to public records and social media. President Donald Trump, who attended the dinner and was unharmed, posted footage of the incident on his Truth Social platform Saturday night showing a man charging through a checkpoint before agents brought him down.

Allen holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology earned in 2017 and a master's degree in computer science from California State University-Dominguez Hills, according to his LinkedIn profile. Bin Tang, a computer science professor at Cal State Dominguez Hills, told the Associated Press that Allen was a standout student.

"He was a very good student indeed, always sitting in the first row of my class, paying attention, and frequently emailing me with coursework questions. Soft spoken, very polite, a good fellow. I am very shocked to see the news," Tang wrote in an email to the AP.

Federal campaign finance records show Allen contributed $25 to a Democratic political action committee supporting Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign. His online resume lists six years of employment at C2 Education, a college admissions counseling and test prep company that named him teacher of the month in 2024. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday night.

Allen also developed a video game for the Steam platform based on molecular chemistry and was working on a new "top-down shooter" combat game set in outer space, according to a post under his name.

A motive has not been publicly established. Federal charges were pending as of Saturday night, with the U.S. Secret Service and the Metropolitan Police Department leading the investigation. A court appearance date had not been announced as of publication.

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