Social media posts that appear to match the California man arrested Saturday in the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner show he is a highly educated tutor and amateur video game developer.
A May 2025 profile photo of Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, appears to match the man in a photo of the alleged attacker being taken into custody that was posted Saturday night by President Donald Trump. The LinkedIn photo shows Allen in a cap and gown after earning a master’s degree in computer science from California State University-Dominguez Hills.
Allen, 31, earned a bachelor’s degree in 2017 in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. His profile lists involvement in a Christian student fellowship and a campus group known for Nerf gun skirmishes.
A Los Angeles ABC station interviewed Allen during his senior year as part of a story on new technologies to help people as they age; he had developed a prototype for an emergency brake for wheelchairs. Federal campaign finance records show he donated $25 to a Democratic Party political action committee supporting Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential bid.
His online resume lists six years at C2 Education, a company that provides admissions counseling and test preparation; a 2024 C2 Education Facebook post named him the company’s teacher of the month. Allen also posted that he created a chemistry-based video game for the Steam platform and said he was developing a new top-down shooter set in outer space.
