Cole Tomas Allen, 31, is accused of rushing a security checkpoint armed with a shotgun, handgun and knives, and exchanging gunfire with law enforcement.
The California teacher and engineer accused of opening fire outside the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was targeting Trump administration officials, according to a note he sent family members before the Saturday attack.
Cole Tomas Allen, 31, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance, is the armed suspect federal authorities subdued near the packed ballroom at the Washington Hilton where President Donald Trump and other White House officials gathered with journalists, a federal official familiar with the case told NBC News.
Authorities say the suspect was armed with a shotgun, handgun and knives when he rushed a security checkpoint and ran toward the ballroom where the black-tie dinner was being held. He exchanged gunfire with law enforcement and was tackled to the ground.
Before the attack, Allen sent family members a note apologizing to his parents, colleagues and others for what he was about to do — but wrote that he did not expect forgiveness, according to a transcript of some of Allen’s writings provided to NBC News by a senior administration official.
In the note, Allen criticized Trump without mentioning him by name and said he did not intend to target guests and hotel employees. He also wrote about lax security at the hotel, saying he had expected more.
The senior administration official said that Allen’s brother contacted the New London Police Department in Connecticut when he received the note.
The New London Police Department confirmed being contacted at around 10:49 p.m. Saturday, just over two hours after the shooting, “by an individual who expressed concern about the incident that occurred at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner earlier in the evening.” Police contacted federal law enforcement and the caller was interviewed by authorities.
Allen’s sister told the Secret Service and Montgomery County Police after the shooting that her brother had a tendency to make radical statements and he had referred to a plan to do “something” to fix the issues with today’s world, the senior administration official said.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told NBC News earlier on Sunday that “preliminary” findings indicate the suspect was targeting administration officials. Blanche said that law enforcement authorities believe he took a train from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.
Blanche said on “Meet the Press” that authorities believe “the suspect traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago, and then Chicago to Washington, D.C., where he checked into the hotel where the correspondents’ dinner was at in the last day or two.”
The suspect, who was not shot but was taken to a local hospital, is expected to be charged in federal court Monday. In a press conference shortly after the attack at Trump’s first White House Correspondents’ dinner while in office, he called the suspected shooter a “whack job” and a “lone wolf.”
Public records and interviews show that Allen was a trained engineer who once interned for NASA, and participated in the Nerf club and Christian fellowship at his prestigious California university, before more recently developing video games and working as a part-time teacher.
Allen attended Pacific Lutheran High School in Gardena, California, where he was known for his inquisitiveness and intellect, a former volleyball teammate told NBC News. While he had not seen Allen recently, he remembered Allen as a “borderline genius” and “super stable.”
“Other people study hard,” said the ex-teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear it could affect his career. “He didn’t have to study. It would just come to him. He was really, really smart.”
The former teammate said Allen was interested in coding and computers, but he was also a very good writer and seemed to be well-versed in a number of subjects.
“Across the board, he was really knowledgeable, really curious,” the ex-teammate said.
The teammate said they lost touch with Allen once he went off to California Institute of Technology, a private research university in Pasadena, California, but expressed surprise that he would be the suspect in Saturday’s attack.
“He was probably the most gentle person on the team, which makes it even more shocking that he did this,” the ex-teammate said.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Allen graduated from the California Institute of Technology, commonly known as Caltech, in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. The school confirmed it had a record of a student named Cole Allen who graduated in 2017.
While he was a Caltech student, Allen was a member of the winning group of the 31st annual Mechanical Engineering 72 Design Competition, which involved building robots that could play soccer. In the 2016 competition, his five-person group “Blitzkrieg Bots” competed against four other teams for the “Tridroid Cup.”
Months later, Allen was featured in a local news report for developing a prototype emergency brake for wheelchairs.
“The wheelchair brakes tend to lock the wheels, but don’t lock the chair to the ground. But with this device, that will prevent the chair from skidding at all,” Allen told ABC7 in 2017.
Outside of the classroom, according to his LinkedIn, Allen participated in the Caltech Christian Fellowship and Nerf Club.
The LinkedIn profile indicates he obtained his master’s of science degree in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills in May 2025.
After graduating from Caltech, Allen worked for a year as a mechanical engineer, before becoming an independent video game developer and later also a part-time teacher at C2 Education, a company dedicated to helping high schoolers get into college, according to the LinkedIn profile.
In December 2024, C2 Education named Allen its “teacher of the month.”
That same year, Allen donated $25 to ActBlue with the memo “Earmarked for Harris for President,” according to Federal Election Commission filings. In the donation, he listed his occupation as teacher for C2 Education.
Dylan Wakayama, president of the Asian American Civic Trust, told NBC News that Allen tutored one student who volunteers at his Torrance-based nonprofit, as well as the sibling of another.
“They described him as someone who was very intelligent,” Wakayama said. “They never would have expected this.”
The student who received tutoring from Allen told Wakayama that she had met with him as recently as April 14 and there were no signs anything was amiss.
“It’s been that recent,” she texted Wakayama Saturday night, according to him. “Bio, math, English, Science, literally everything.”
“He’s so smart,” she added in the text, according to Wakayama.
According to LinkedIn, Allen began working as a “self-employed” indie game developer in September 2018, and appears to have released an “atomic fighting game” called Bohrdom on Steam that year. In a trailer for the game, according to WIRED, it is described as a “non-violent, skill-based, asymmetrical fighting game loosely based on a chemistry model that is itself loosely based on reality.”
Paul Thompson, one of Allen’s neighbors, said Allen lived with his parents and rode a blue moped around the area. He said Allen was “not necessarily friendly,” but he hadn’t noticed anything off about him. He added that Allen’s “parents are nice, friendly people,” and the “father especially knows everybody.”
Records show that Allen purchased a Maverick 12 gauge shotgun in August 2025 and an Armscor Precision .38 semi-automatic pistol in October 2023.
A senior law enforcement official tells NBC News those were the two weapons they recovered from Allen on Saturday night.
In the interview with law enforcement, Allen’s sister confirmed he purchased two handguns and a shotgun from CAP Tactical Firearms and kept them stored at their parents’ home, according to a senior administration official. She added that their parents were unaware that Allen was keeping the firearms in the home.
Allen regularly went to a shooting range to train with his firearms and was a part of a group called “The Wide Awakes,” the sister said in the interview, according to the official. He also allegedly attended a “No Kings” anti-Trump protest in California at some point.
Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., said the suspect would be charged with two counts of using a firearm during a crime of violence and a second crime of assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon. She added that “many more charges” were expected to be filed.
Late Saturday night local time, the FBI and Secret Service were at a home believed to be associated with Allen in Torrance, a city of around 140,000 residents in California’s South Bay, about 15 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The FBI was preparing to serve a search warrant related to the incident at the dinner, said Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.
Saturday’s shooting rocked attendees of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, an annual event attended by the Washington press corps, presidential administration staffers and celebrities.
Trump had attended the dinner before he first became president but skipped it throughout his first term. Saturday was the first time he was attending as president, and he was accompanied by first lady Melania Trump when the shots rang out.
They and others were seated at the front of the ballroom when video captured what sounded like at least five loud bangs before armed officers rushed in and hauled the president, first lady, Vice President JD Vance and others away while other attendees ducked down under tables.
“I heard a noise and sort of thought it was a tray. I thought it was a tray going down,” Trump said from the White House briefing room Saturday night after the shooting.
“Melania was very cognizant, I think, of what happened,” the president said. “I think she knew immediately wha happened. She was saying, ‘That’s a bad noise.’”
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