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April 26 (Reuters) – The suspect arrested in the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting on Saturday was identified by a law enforcement official as Cole Tomas Allen, a Los \u200cAngeles-area man who appears from social media sites to be a Caltech graduate \u200cworking as a part-time teacher and game developer.<\/p>\n
* The official said Allen, approximately 31 years of age, is a resident \u200bof Torrance, California, a coastal town that is part of the South Bay area adjacent to Los Angeles abutting Santa Monica Bay.<\/p>\n
* The chief of the District of Columbia police department said investigators believe the suspect was a guest at the Washington Hilton hotel, where the annual dinner was taking \u200cplace, but that no motive \u2060had been determined.<\/p>\n
* Facebook postings appearing to relate to Cole show that he was named \u201cTeacher of the Month\u201d in December 2024 by the Torrance office \u2060of C2 Education, a nationwide private test-preparation and tutoring service for college-bound students.<\/p>\n
* A LinkedIn profile in the suspect’s name describes him as a “mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, independent game developer by \u200bexperience, \u200bteacher by birth.”<\/p>\n
* He obtained a bachelor’s degree in \u200bmechanical engineering from the California Institute \u200cof Technology in 2017, and a master’s degree in computer science from California State University at Dominguez Hills in 2025, according to the profile. Caltech said in a statement that a person of that name graduated in 2017.<\/p>\n
* Under job experience, the post shows he has worked for the past several years as a part-time teacher for C2 Education and as a self-employed \u200cgame developer. He previously worked as a mechanical engineer \u200bfor a company called IJK Controls in South Pasadena \u200bfor a year before that as a \u200bCaltech teaching assistant.<\/p>\n
* The profile also includes a local newspaper article “on a \u200crobotics competition my team won” at Caltech \u200bin 2016.<\/p>\n
* Under “Causes,” it \u200blists only: “Science and Technology.”<\/p>\n
* The Secret Service said the suspect was armed with a shotgun and was taken into custody after opening fire at a Secret Service agent in \u200bthe Washington Hilton Hotel, outside \u200cthe ballroom where the event was attended by President Donald Trump, his wife Melania, \u200bVice President JD Vance and several cabinet secretaries.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los \u200bAngeles; Editing by Scott Malone and William Mallard)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n