The suspect at the White House correspondents’ dinner sprinted past a U.S. Secret Service security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton on Saturday evening, racing through a magnetometer and reaching the top of a staircase that led to the ballroom where President Donald Trump was gathered with Cabinet officials and members of the press, according to a Washington Post analysis of visuals, hotel schematics and eyewitness testimony.
The suspect, whom officials identified as Cole Tomas Allen, was apprehended around 8:35 p.m., having sprinted at least 60 feet, according to security camera footage and measurements taken using a virtual tour available through the hotel’s website. He was photographed on the ground, his hands behind his back, at the top of the stairs. At the bottom of the staircase is a set of doors that open on to the ballroom, opposite the stage where Trump was seated.
Air Force veteran and dinner guest Erin Thielman told The Post she was standing near the stairs making a phone call when she saw a man with a gun run through the security checkpoint toward the stairs. She said she saw officers fire on him from behind, at which point he fell face-first about a foot from her.
Thielman said she assumed he had been shot because he wasn’t moving and the long gun he had been carrying had fallen by his side. He didn’t get up, she said, as she retreated down the stairs.
“I ran back down to the ballroom, passing by Secret Service with their pistols drawn in a defensive position. I yelled, ‘Gun’ and ‘Shooter’ as I went into the ballroom,” Thielman said.
Interim D.C. police chief Jeffery Carroll said Allen was carrying a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives. Carroll said Allen was not shot. A Secret Service officer whose name has not been released was shot and wounded during the incident.
Roads were closed around the hotel, and a security perimeter was established outside the building.
Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, had checked into the hotel as a guest “in the last day or two,” interim U.S. attorney general Todd Blanche said Sunday.
Gavin Quinton, a reporting fellow for the Los Angeles Times who attended the dinner, told The Post he had to show a ticket to enter the exterior security perimeter. It was the first of several times Quinton said he had to flash his ticket as a “spot check” at various security checkpoints along the route to the ballroom. At one security checkpoint, he said guests were also sniffed by dogs.
Quinton said he was on his way into the restroom when shots rang out behind him. He and around a dozen other people, including CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, sheltered in the restroom for nearly 10 minutes, before they were told to exit.
“I saw this body on the ground,” he said. “They were flanked by quite a few people, and we were told to go quickly.”
Dylan Moriarty, Isaac Arnsdorf and Dan Diamond contributed to this report.
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