The man suspected of opening fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday evening worked as a teacher and video game developer from Southern California, according to public records.
Cole Tomas Allen, 31, who lives in Torrance, a suburb of Los Angeles, has been identified by law enforcement as the armed suspect apprehended near the dinner attended by Donald Trump and other officials, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
A LinkedIn profile matching his name and photo described him as a part-time teacher at C2 Education, a test preparation and tutoring company. C2 named Allen its “Teacher of the Month” in December 2024, according to the company’s social media posts.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Allen graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and earned a master’s degree in computer science last year from California State University, Dominguez Hills.
As a student at Caltech, he appeared in a local news report in 2017 for developing a prototype emergency brake system for wheelchairs.
Federal Election Commission records show Allen donated $25 to the 2024 presidential campaign of Kamala Harris.
Allen also described himself as a video game developer on LinkedIn and appears to have released an indie game titled “Bohrdom” on the Steam platform for $1.99. He registered a trademark for the game’s name in 2018, according to federal records.
On his LinkedIn, Allen wrote that he is “currently developing a second game,” with the working title “First Law.”
