The suspect arrested in the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting 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 California Institute of Technology graduate working as a part-time teacher and game developer.
United States President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump were rushed out of the White House Correspondents' Association dinner by Secret Service agents after a man opened fire with a shotgun on security personnel.
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 where the event was attended by the president, Vice President JD Vance and several cabinet secretaries.
United police officials told the Reuters news agency that 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.
Here's what we know about the suspected shooter.
A teacher and mechanical engineer
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.
Under "Causes," it lists only: "Science and Technology."
Trump describes suspect as "sick"
Trump described the suspect as a "sick" individual and "a would-be assassin who sought to kill".
Trump said he was grateful for the swift response of law enforcement.
"This is not the first time in the past couple of years that a Republican has been attacked by a would-be assassin who sought to kill," Trump said.
US authorities said they could not yet confirm whether the president was the intended target. Local police said they could not specify the "specific motivation" but described him as a "lone gunman".
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