Cole Tomas Allen has been identified as the suspected gunman who opened fire outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, forcing the evacuation of President Donald Trump.
The 31-year-old Allen traveled by train from Los Angeles — where he lives and works as an educator in nearby Torrance — to Chicago, and then another train from Chicago to Washington, D.C., on Friday, after which he checked into the Washington Hilton Hotel, where the Correspondents’ Dinner was being held, CBS News reports.
In the aftermath of the incident, details about Allen’s history have emerged: He earned a degree in mechanical engineering at the prestigious California Institute of Technology in 2017, and then received a master’s in computer science at California State University, Dominguez Hills, in 2025.
A high school classmate told NBC News that Allen was “borderline genius” and “super stable.” “Other people study hard,” said the classmate. “He didn’t have to study. It would just come to him. He was really, really smart.”
While at CalTech, Allen was featured in a local news report in 2017 for developing a prototype emergency brake for wheelchairs.
In addition to serving as an educator at a Torrance tutoring firm, Allen’s LinkedIn page states he is also a self-employed video game developer, with one of his games reportedly available on the Steam marketplace.
Law enforcement told CBS News that Allen legally purchased the shotgun used in Saturday’s shooting in August 2025, as well as another firearm purchased in 2023. Following his arrest, a search warrant was obtained for Allen’s Los Angeles area residence, and his cellphone was seized. While he was not cooperating with authorities, people who knew him were talking with authorities.
Federal campaign records revealed that Allen donated $25 to an ActBlue PAC tied to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in 2024, but authorities said they were still investigating Allen’s motive for why the “lone wolf” was targeting members of the Trump administration.
“We’re still looking to try to understand a motive. From our preliminary investigation, it does appear the suspect was targeting members of the administration,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN. “We don’t have specifics yet about particular members of the administration, except that we do understand that that was his goal and his target.”
Blanche added, “We’re still investigating what we knew, if anything about this, this individual. It appears that he purchased the two firearms that he had on him within the past couple of years. He had knives on him as well.”
Allen is due in federal court Monday, where he’ll be charged with one count each of using a firearm during a crime of violence, and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon, with additional charges likely to follow.
“There’s a lot of federal charges that could be in play beyond those two charges, but it depends on us understanding his motive, his intent, his premeditation of what led into him deciding he was going to do what he did,” Blanche said.
