Suspected gunman at White House press dinner named | White House correspondents’ dinner shooting

The suspect in the shooting that roiled Washington at the White House correspondents’ dinner has been identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen from Southern California.

Allen, who lives in Torrance, a suburb of Los Angeles, has no criminal or civil court history in Los Angeles County, according to a records search.

US officials have not yet publicly identified the suspect. A LinkedIn profile named “Cole Allen” showed a photo of a man similar to the photo shared by Donald Trump.

In his social media profile, Allen said he is an engineer with a passion for game development in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

“Mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, indie game developer by experience, teacher by birth,” according to his profile, which states that he has a bachelor’s degree from the California Institute of Technology.

Video posted by the president to the Truth Social platform on Saturday evening showed surveillance footage of a man sprinting through a Secret Service checkpoint near the main magnetometer metal detector screening area just outside the main ballroom of the Washington Hilton, where the event was to be held. As he runs, agents are seen pulling guns and opening fire. Trump also posted a photo of a shirtless man lying on the ground as if he had been caught.

Jeffery Carroll, interim police chief of the city’s metropolitan police department, told reporters at a news conference that the suspect was pinned to the ground by law enforcement. Carroll added that the suspect was not shot, but exchanged fire with a police officer who was shot while wearing a bulletproof vest. The officer was released from the hospital Sunday morning.

Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a press conference that the suspect was in custody and there was no reason to believe anyone else was involved.

Investigators believe the suspect was armed with a shotgun, handgun and knives, Carroll said. He also said the suspect was believed to be a guest at the hotel and was involved in a fight while trying to get involved.

“We believe he was a guest at the hotel. We have arranged for a room here at the hotel and we will again follow appropriate procedures to determine what happened there,” Carroll said.

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and the district’s attorney general, said the defendant has been indicted on two counts and will be arraigned Monday and will likely face additional charges.

“Based on what we know so far, it is clear that this individual intends to harm and cause as much damage as he can,” Pirro said.

Trump said authorities searched the suspect’s home in California. The reason for the apparent attack has not yet been clearly revealed.

He is thought to have acted alone. Acting US attorney general Todd Blanche said the suspect appeared to be targeting the Trump administration, “possibly including the president.”

At a White House press conference following the attack, Trump described the suspect as a “lone wolf guy” who “looked bad” and would spend “life in prison.”

Initial reports indicate that those who knew Allen in his youth were surprised to discover he was the suspect.

A former high school volleyball teammate from Pacific Lutheran High School in Gardena, California, told NBC News that her experience was that Allen was a “borderline genius” and “super consistent.”

“Other people work hard,” said the former teammate, who asked not to be named. “He didn’t have to work. He would think about it. He was really smart.”

He said Allen has many talents, including writing, that go beyond coding and computers, in which he is particularly interested. He said Allen seemed knowledgeable on many topics.

“He was just overall really knowledgeable and really curious,” the former teammate said.

Adam added: “He was probably the nicest person on the team, which makes it even more shocking that he would do this.”

According to his LinkedIn page, Allen graduated from the California Institute of Technology, a college in Pasadena, California (commonly known as Caltech), in 2017 with a degree in mechanical engineering. The private university confirmed that it had a student named Cole Allen who graduated the same year.

During his senior year in college, he worked as a teaching assistant and was a part of the Caltech Christian Fellowship and the Caltech Nerf Club. He also won an internal robotics competition with teammates on his course.

After graduating, he worked as a mechanical engineer for a year and then began his career as an independent video game developer under the name Ice-Forged Games.

He has a game called Bohrdom, released in 2018, on the Steam gaming platform. This game is described as a “non-violent asymmetric fighting game” loosely based on chemistry. Players can either take on the role of an electron trying to escape from an atom, or play as the nucleus trying to stop the electrons from escaping.

He continued teaching part-time for a company dedicated to helping high school students get into college, according to his LinkedIn profile.

A social media post from C2 Education, a tutoring and test preparation company in Torrence, named Allen its 2024 teacher of the month.

In an interview on US television, one of his former students described him as “a pretty normal guy”, “a little quirky” but otherwise an “ordinary person”.

“I don’t know, you never expect it to come from this guy,” he said.

Allen described himself as “mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, indie game developer by experience, teacher by birth.”

His LinkedIn profile also states that Allen earned a master’s degree in computer science from California State University at Dominguez Hills last year.