Cole Tomas Allen, the suspect arrested in the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting on Saturday, is described on social media and online profiles as a software developer and teacher.
Officials say the 31-year-old lives in Torrance, California, the coastal South Bay town where the Correspondents’ Dinner took place. The chief of the District of Columbia police department said Allen was a guest at the Washington Hilton hotel where the event was being held.
A Facebook profile indicated Allen was “teacher of the month” in December 2024 at C2 Education’s Torrance office, a national private test-preparation and tutoring service for college applicants. His LinkedIn profile stated he was “a mechanical engineer and a computer scientist by Degree, an independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth.”
Allen completed a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2017 and a master’s degree in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 2025. Caltech confirmed 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,” described as “loosely based on a Chemistry model” that is “loosely based on reality.” As an undergraduate he was a member of the school’s Christian fellowship and the Nerf club; his graduation photo shows him holding a picture of himself with a stuffed rabbit.
Allen has worked as a mechanical engineer for UK Controls in South Pasadena and served as a teaching assistant at Caltech. In 2016 he competed in a robotics competition at the school.
Records show that a month before the 2024 election outcome, Allen donated $25 to ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates, according to the Los Angeles Times; it was his only political donation listed on the FEC website in the past decade. He is registered to vote with no party preference.