{"id":754585,"date":"2026-04-26T15:01:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T15:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/754585\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T15:01:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T15:01:30","slug":"accused-shooter-at-correspondents-dinner-is-31-year-old-caltech-grad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/754585\/","title":{"rendered":"Accused shooter at correspondents dinner is 31-year-old Caltech grad"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cole<\/a>A photo of shooting suspect Cole Tomas Allen distributed on social media by President Trump. (Image from post on X)<\/p>\n

Social media posts that appear to match the California man arrested Saturday in the\u00a0shooting at the White House correspondents\u2019 dinner<\/a>\u00a0show he is a highly educated tutor and amateur video game developer.<\/p>\n

A May 2025 profile photo of Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance appears to match the appearance of the man in a photo of the alleged attacker being taken into custody that was posted Saturday night by President Donald Trump. The photo, posted to the social networking site LinkedIn, shows him in a cap and gown after graduating with a master\u2019s degree in computer science from California State University-Dominguez Hills.<\/p>\n

Allen, 31, earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in 2017 in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He listed his involvement there in a Christian student fellowship and a campus group that battled with Nerf guns.<\/p>\n

Bin Tang, a computer science professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills, told The Associated Press that Allen took a few of his classes before graduating.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a very good student indeed, always sitting in the first row of my class, paying attention, and frequently emailing me with coursework questions. Soft spoken, very polite, a good fellow. I am very shocked to see the news,\u201d Tang wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

A local ABC station in Los Angeles included an interview with Allen during his senior year of college as\u00a0part of a story<\/a>\u00a0about new technologies to help people as they age. He had developed a prototype for a new type of emergency brake for wheelchairs.<\/p>\n

Allen contributed $25 to a Democratic Party political action committee in support of Kamala Harris for president in 2024, according to federal campaign finance records.<\/p>\n

Allen\u2019s online resume says he worked for the last six years at C2 Education, a company that offers admissions counseling and test preparation services to aspiring college students. A 2024 post on the company\u2019s Facebook page listed Allen as the company\u2019s teacher of the month. The company did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Saturday night.<\/p>\n

Allen also posted that he had developed a video game for the Steam platform based on molecular chemistry. A post under Allen\u2019s name said he was working to develop a new \u201ctop-down shooter\u201d combat game set in outer space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A photo of shooting suspect Cole Tomas Allen distributed on social media by President Trump. (Image from post…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":754586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,82766,310141,1807,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,308777],"class_list":["post-754585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-america","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-caltech","tag-cole-tomas-allen","tag-president-trump","tag-san-diego","tag-sandiego","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-white-house-correspondents-dinner"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116471613906932077","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}