He identified himself in a missive sent to family members moments before the attack as a “friendly federal assassin” and railed against Trump administration policies. He booked a hotel room at the Washington Hilton weeks in advance, then traveled by train from his home outside Los Angeles to Chicago and then to D.C.
And as he stormed the security perimeter at the White House correspondents’ dinner Saturday, exchanging gunfire with Secret Service agents, the 31-year-old suspected shooter aimed to target top officials, including possibly the president himself, law enforcement officials said.
Those details about the man involved in the shooting that forced the evacuation of President Donald Trump and several members of his cabinet from the ritzy annual event emerged Sunday as investigators on two coasts worked to gather information on the suspected gunman and what motivated his attack.
Though officials have not publicly named the man they took into custody Saturday, five people familiar with the investigation have identified him as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California. They, like others who shared details of the ongoing investigation, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly disclose details of the probe.
Social media accounts that appear to be linked to Allen describe him as a self-employed video game designer and a part-time teacher, whose employer named him in 2024 as “Teacher of the Month.”
He earned an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2017, where he was part of an award-winning robotics team, and a master’s degree in computer science from California State University last year, according to those profiles and two law enforcement officials who said the details they contained matched those of the suspect.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday the preliminary investigation indicated that the gunman acted alone and set out from his home in California earlier this week before arriving in D.C. and checking into the Hilton on Friday with two firearms and a knife he had purchased years before.
So far, the suspect had refused to cooperate with investigators, Blanche said. But interviews with family members as well as writings recovered from Allen’s home outside Los Angeles and the hotel room he booked at the Washington Hilton contributed to a growing confidence among authorities that his attack was politically motivated.
“It does appear that he did in fact set out to target folks in the administration, likely including the president,” Blanche said during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Law enforcement officials have said the gunman stormed the security checkpoints in the lobby of the Washington Hilton around 8:30 p.m., feet from the ballroom where Trump was preparing to deliver his first address to the White House Correspondents’ Association as a sitting president. Security personnel quickly tackled the gunman to the ground and the only person injured was a Secret Service agent whose bulletproof vest stopped a shot to the chest.
Minutes before Saturday’s shooting, Allen sent a message to his family apologizing for what he said he was about to do.
“I don’t expect forgiveness, but if I could have seen any other way to get this close, I would have taken it,” he wrote.
That message was first reported Sunday by the New York Post. Two law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation later confirmed the accuracy of that letter to The Washington Post.
Though the message did not mention Trump by name or specifically detail plans to attempt to assassinate the president, its author expressed sharp criticism of his administration and said that he was no longer willing to permit a “traitor to coat my hands with his crime.”
“I am a citizen of the United States of America,” he wrote. “What my representatives do reflects on me.”
The letter said he intended to target administration officials “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest” — “not including [FBI Director Kash] Patel,” who was in attendance at the Saturday event. The author wrote he had no desire to target law enforcement or the dinner’s other attendees.
But he added: “I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary … but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”
He ridiculed what he called lax security at the hotel, and said Iranian agents could easily have brought more dangerous weapons to the venue, according to the text.
After receiving the letter, Allen’s brother contacted police in New London, Connecticut, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The New London Police Department said in a statement its officers were contacted just before 11 p.m., roughly two hours after the Secret Service had detained the gunman.
The Secret Service and police in Montgomery County, Maryland interviewed Allen’s sister, who lives in Rockville. She told authorities that her brother was prone to making “radical statements” and frequently expressed a desire do something to fix what he described as issues with today’s world, according to a White House official and a law enforcement official briefed on authorities’ discussions with her.
Allen had purchased two handguns and a shotgun years ago, which he kept stored in their parents home, the officials briefed on Allen’s sister’s interview with authorities said.
There was little otherwise in public records or Allen’s online profile to suggest cause for concern. Interim D.C. police chief Jeffery Carroll said the suspect in custody had no immediately identifiable criminal history and was not previously known to law enforcement.
He had not indicated a party affiliation in his Los Angeles County voter registration records but had donated $25 to ActBlue, the Democratic PAC supporting Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign, according to federal campaign finance filings.
The LinkedIn profile registered in Allen’s name painted a portrait of a highly educated man with a passion for video game design and an early career in education. Spokespeople for California Institute of Technology and California State University confirmed a student named Cole Allen graduated from the school in 2017, but they could not confirm it was the same person who was in custody.
Kevin Tang, who lived in the same dorm as Allen at Caltech, said he remembered Allen as “a very nice guy.”
A local ABC station in Los Angeles interviewed Allen during his senior year of college as part of a story about technology available to assist people as they age. He had developed a prototype for an emergency brake for wheelchairs.
Bin Tang, a computer science professor at the California State University at Dominguez Hills, where Allen earned his master’s degree last year, said he taught him in a few of his classes.
“He 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,” Tang wrote in an email to The Washington Post.
Allen had been working as a teacher with private tutoring and test prep company C2 since 2020, according to the LinkedIn page. The company named him “Teacher of the Month” in December 2024, an honor memorialized in social media posts taken down after Saturday’s shooting.
“We are cooperating fully with law enforcement to assist them in their investigation,” the company said in an emailed statement Sunday. “Violence of any kind is never the answer.”
Allen also described his work designing video games on the side. He published a game called “Borhdom” under the studio name Ice-Forged Games on the gaming platform Steam in December 2018, which he described as a “skill-based, nonviolent asymmetrical fighting game.”
As news of the shooting began to spread Saturday night, a small crowd gathered outside the modest two-story house in Torrance, a suburb about 20 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles, where records show Allen lived.
“This is a quiet neighborhood. We moved here because it was super safe,” James Costello, 53, a prop master and nearby neighbor, told The Post. Costello said there are many current and former law enforcement officers living in the neighborhood. Costello said he didn’t know Allen beyond a friendly “hello.”
Other neighbors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing privacy concerns, said they would wave to Allen and see him ride his scooter down the street but did not know him well.
“We see them every day and we just say hi, and they’re very nice,” a 50-year-old man said of Allen and his family. “They’re peaceful people.”
Hours afterward, FBI and Secret Service agents surrounded the home. Onlookers gathered beyond the crime scene tape as local news video showed law enforcement personnel shining a spotlight in an upstairs window.
Max Harris, a local high school senior, stood amid the crowd, taking in the scene. He told reporters that Allen had tutored him for several months. “He seemed just like a completely average guy,” he said. “I never would have expected anything like this. … It’s really just bizarre.”
Allen is expected to face preliminary charges of assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon and using a firearm during a crime of violence, felony crimes which carry potential punishments of more than a decade behind bars. He is scheduled to make his first appearance in federal court in D.C. on Monday.
“This individual was intent on doing as much harm and as much damage as he could,” U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said.
Kirkpatrick reported from Torrance, California. Isaac Arnsdorf, Todd Wallack, Liam Scott, Salvador Rizzo, Aaron Schaffer and Razzan Nakhlawi in Washington contributed to this report.
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