Cole Tomas Allen, the suspect who was arrested in the White House Correspondents' shooting on Saturday, is a software developer and teacher, according to social media sites and his online profiles.
Officials say that the 31-year-old is a resident of Torrance, California, the coastal South Bay town where the Correspondents' Dinner also took place.
According to the chief of the District of Columbia police department, Cole was a guest at the Washington Hilton hotel where the event was being held.
A Facebook profile showed that Cole was “teacher of the month” in December 2024 at C2 Education's Torrance office. The service is known for providing a nationwide private test preparation and tutoring for students who are applying for college.
The suspect's LinkedIn profile said that he was a mechanical engineer and a computer scientist by Degree, an independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth."
1st video of moving Trump shooter '31yo Californian Cole Tomas Allen' being detained https://t.co/D33GaTMDEu pic.twitter.com/Jv3wNMtb7g
— RT (@RT_com) April 26, 2026
He did his bachelors degree in Mechanical engineering from the California In California Institute of Technology in 2017, and a master's degree in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 2025. The California Institute has confirmed that a person by the same name graduated in 2017.
In 2019, he created and released a skill-based game on Steam and registered the domain name “Bohrdom”. It is described as 'loosely based on a Chemistry model' that is 'loosely based on reality'.
While he was an undergraduate student, he was also a member of the school's Christian fellowship and the Nerf club. In his graduation picture, he holds a picture of himself with a stuffed rabbit.
Allen previously also worked as a mechanical engineer for UK Controls in South Pasadena and was a teaching assistant at Caltech. In 2016, he competed in a robotics competition at the school.
A month before Donald Trump won the elections in 2024, Allen had donated $25 to the political action committee Act Blue, a fund for the democrat party in the US, the Los Angeles Times reported. It was his only political donation on the FEC website in the past decade.
He is also registered to vote with no party preference.
