Cole Tomas Allen, Torrance, California man id White House Correspondents’ Dinner gunman who fired shots where President Trump, senior officials and up to 2,500 had attended at Washington Hilton as authorities have yet to identify motive of accomplished whizz kid mechanical engineer/teacher and masters of computing sciences graduate.
An awarded Los Angeles area teacher from Torrance, California has been identified as the alleged gunman who opened fire during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, in Washington D.C., Saturday night. Authorities have not yet said whether the shooting was an attempt on President Donald Trump’s life.
Cole Tomas Allen, 31, from Torrance, CA., was apprehended by police after trying to storm the Washington Hilton, and was taken into custody.
Allen was armed with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives when he rushed a security checkpoint and ran toward the ballroom where the dinner was being held, said Jeff Carroll, interim police chief for the Washington Metropolitan Police Department.
WHCD gunman sent family members anti Trump manifesto, wanted to take out Trump officials
U.S. President Donald J. Trump has released a video showing Cole Thomas Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, California, who supported Kamala Harris, the suspected shooter at tonight’s White House Correspondents Dinner, attempting to run past law enforcement and Secret… pic.twitter.com/2dWBqanWVy
— Tony Seruga (@TonySeruga) April 26, 2026
WHCD gunman was targeting Trump admin members, including President
At the time of the alleged attack, Donald Trump, first lady Melania and senior officials who were quickly evacuated to safety from the annual event after several gunshots were heard outside the Washington Hilton Hotel ballroom where around 2,500 people were in attendance according to the New York Times.
The attempted attack led to witnesses saying hearing three gunshots, with Tomas Allen found to be in possession of a rifle and magazines.
He exchanged gunfire with law enforcement and was tackled to the ground, Carroll said.
Allen who was not shot but taken to hospital to be evaluated.
Carroll said authorities believe the suspect was a guest at the hotel, which allowed him to breach the event’s outermost layer of security.
Officials have said Allen has no criminal record and was not on the radar of law enforcement in Washington, D.C.
WHCD gunman wanted to fix everything wrong with the world, handwritten notes reveal
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter was armed with a shotgun, handgun, and multiple knives, according to DC police chief Jeffrey Carroll.
The shooter was identified as 31-year-old teacher Cole Allen from Torrance, California.
The suspect emerged from a “makeshift… pic.twitter.com/aUK5m6AwCr
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 26, 2026
Lone wolf gunman
Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., said the suspect will be charged with two counts of using a firearm during a crime of violence and a second crime of assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon. She added that ‘many more charges’ are expected to be filed.
Pirro said the suspect is expected to be arraigned Monday in federal court, NBC News reported.
President Trump said in a press conference at the White House 90 minutes after the attack that an ‘armed man with a shotgun fired at a Secret Service agent, hitting his bulletproof vest’. The injured agent, who was taken to hospital, was in ‘great shape’, Trump said.
Trump shared on his Truth Social page hotel CCTV security footage that appeared to show a man dressed in black sprinting through a metal detector, past security officers who quickly drew their guns.
Trump called the gunman a ‘lone wolf’ and a ‘whack job’, adding that he would be ‘spending life in prison’. He said: ‘He’s in custody and they’re asking him a lot of questions.’
‘I heard a noise and sort of thought it was a tray. I thought it was a tray going down,’ Trump said from the White House briefing room Saturday night after the shooting.
‘Melania was very cognizant, I think, of what happened,’ the president said. ‘I think she knew immediately what happened. She was saying, ‘That’s a bad noise.’’
No known motive. Who had gunman come to target?
A photograph taken by reporters at the scene showed the suspect on the floor of the hotel lobby with his hands cuffed behind his back.
A witness who identified herself as a volunteer working at the event said she saw the suspected gunman assemble what appeared to be a ‘long’ weapon in a side room near the terrace-level entrance.
Helen Mabus described a ‘makeshift room’ near the entrance where bar carts were being stored and where ‘there was no security’ at the time.
‘He was in that room […] he grabbed it out of a bag or something,’ Mabus told the nypost, adding that the weapon ‘was long’ and ‘didn’t look like a typical gun’.
The suspect booked a room in the Hilton in early April, sources told ABC. He allegedly made some reference to targeting administration officials but was not specific, the law enforcement officials said.
Academic whizz kid
According to his LinkedIn profile, Allen graduated from the California Institute of Technology, a prestigious private research university in Pasadena, California, in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. The school, commonly known as Caltech, confirmed it had a record of a student named Cole Allen who graduated in 2017.
The LinkedIn profile indicates he obtained his masters of science degree in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills in May 2025.
After graduating from Caltech, Allen worked for a year as a mechanical engineer, before becoming an independent video game developer and later also a part-time teacher at a company dedicated to helping high schoolers get into college, according to the LinkedIn profile.
In December 2024, a Facebook post from private tutoring service C2 Education named Allen as ‘Teacher of the Month.’
Federal Election Committee records show a single $25 contribution via ActBlue to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. According to FEC filings, it was his only political donation in the past ten years. Allen was a registered voter but not a member of a political party.
Late Saturday local time, the FBI and Secret Service were at a home believed to be associated with Allen in Torrance, a city of around 140,000 residents in California’s South Bay, about 15 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles according to The Los Angeles Times.
The FBI was preparing to serve a search warrant related to the incident at the dinner, said Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.
The authorities have not publicly released a motive. If confirmed to have been an attempt on Donald Trump’s life, the incident will have been the third such in two years.
