Donald Trump published in his Truth Social a photo of the man detained by the Secret Service after the shooting
Posts on social media that appear to match the Californian arrested for the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner indicate that he is a highly educated tutor and amateur video game programmer. He was named “Teacher of the Month” for December 2024.
The suspect arrested in Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting has been identified as Cole Tomas Allena man from the Los Angeles area who, judging by his social media profiles, is graduate hair Caltech and works as a part-time teacher and video game programmer.
The president Donald Trumpwhich was where the dinner was taking place after 5 to 8 shots were heard, described the shooter as “a madman” and “a person with serious problems”guaranteeing that he acted alone and calling him “lone wolf”.
According to a security forces official, Allen, with about 31 years oldlives in Torrance, California, a coastal location that is part of the South Bay area, adjacent to Los Angeles and close to Santa Monica Bay.
The District of Columbia police chief said investigators believe the suspect I was staying at the hotel Washington Hilton, where the annual dinner was taking place, but no motive for the attack has yet been determined.
One on Facebook that appears to be related to Cole shows that it was named “Teacher of the Month” in December 2024 by the Torrance branch of C2 Education, a private nationwide exam preparation and tutoring service aimed at students looking to enter university.
A LinkedIn profile in the suspect’s name, which appears to have since been removed by the social network, describes Cole Tomas Allen as a “mechanical engineer and computer scientist by trainingindependent video game programmer by experience, teacher by vocation“.
Cole Tomas Allen’s non-LinkedIn profile
Allen got a degree in mechanical engineering from Caltech, 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 confirmed, in a statement cited by the agency, that a person with that name graduated in 2017.
In the work experience section, the profile indicates that you have worked in recent years as a part-time teacher at C2 Education and self-employed video game programmer. The profile also mentions a Research Fellowship and NASA — a research grant from the North American space agency.
Previously, he served as mechanical engineer at a company called IJK Controls in South Pasadena for a year, and before that he was a teaching assistant at Caltech.
The profile also includes a local newspaper article “about a robotics competition my team won” at Caltech in 2016. In the “Causes“, it just says “Science and Technology.”
According to the Secret Service, the suspect was armed with a shotgun and it was detained after opening fire on an officer at the Washington Hilton hotel, outside the hall where the event was taking place.
According to the Secret Service, the agent was wearing a bulletproof vest and is expected to recover without any consequences. “He was shot at close range with a very powerful weapon, and the vest did its job,” said Donald Trump.
