Cole Tomas Allen named as suspect in WHCA dinner shooting at Washington Hilton
Cole Tomas Allen, a Los Angeles-area man linked to teaching and game development, was identified as the suspect in the WHCA dinner shooting.
The suspect arrested over the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday (April 25) has been identified by a law enforcement official as Cole Tomas Allen, a Los Angeles-area man who appears, based on social media accounts, to be a Caltech graduate working as a part-time teacher and game developer.
The incident prompted Secret Service agents to rush US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump out of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner after loud bangs were heard.
During the event at the Washington Hilton hotel in Washington, DC, several gunshots were reportedly heard. Security officers immediately escorted Trump, his wife, Vice President JD Vance and all senior officials from the area.
Many of the 2,600 attendees took cover, while waiters fled towards the front of the dining hall.
A law enforcement official said Allen, who is approximately 31 years old, is a resident of Torrance, California, a coastal city in the South Bay area near Los Angeles and Santa Monica Bay.
The chief of the District of Columbia police department said investigators believed the suspect had been a guest at the Washington Hilton, where the annual dinner was being held, but that no motive had yet been determined.
Facebook posts appearing to relate to Allen showed 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”.
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 said in a statement that a person with that name graduated in 2017.
Under job experience, the profile states that he has worked for the past several years as a part-time teacher at C2 Education and as a self-employed game developer. It also states that he previously worked for one year as a mechanical engineer at IJK Controls in South Pasadena, and before that as a Caltech teaching assistant.
The profile also includes a local newspaper article about a robotics competition that his team won at Caltech in 2016. Under “Causes”, it lists only “Science and Technology”.
The Secret Service said the suspect was armed with a shotgun and was taken into custody after opening fire at a Secret Service agent at the Washington Hilton, outside the ballroom where the event was attended by President Trump, Melania Trump, Vice President Vance and several Cabinet secretaries.
