Who is Cole Allen, the suspect in the White House shooting?

The suspect arrested in the ⁠White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting on Saturday was identified by a law enforcement official as Cole ​Tomas Allen, a Los Angeles-area ​man who appears from social media sites to be a Caltech graduate working as a part-time teacher and game developer.
* The official said Allen, approximately 31 years of age, is a resident of Torrance, California, a coastal town that is part of the South Bay area adjacent to Los Angeles ⁠abutting Santa Monica Bay.
* The chief of the District of Columbia police department said ⁠investigators believe the suspect was a guest at the Washington Hilton hotel, where the annual dinner was taking place, but that no motive had been determined.
* Facebook postings appearing to relate ‌to Cole show that he was named 'Teacher of ​the Month” in December ⁠2024 by the Torrance office of C2 Education, a nationwide ​private test-preparation and tutoring service for college-bound students.
* ‌A LinkedIn profile in the suspect's name describes him as a 'mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, independent game developer ​by experience, teacher by birth.'
* He obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2017 and a master's degree in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 2025, according to the profile. Caltech said in a statement ‌that a person of that name graduated in 2017.
* Under job experience, the ​post shows he has worked for the past several years as a part-time teacher ​for ‌C2 ⁠Education and as a self-employed game developer. He previously worked as a mechanical engineer for a company called IJK Controls in South Pasadena for a year, and before that, ​as a Caltech teaching assistant.
* The profile also includes ⁠a local newspaper ​article 'on a robotics competition my team won' at Caltech in 2016.
* Under 'Causes,' it lists only: 'Science and Technology.'
* The Secret Service said the suspect was armed with a shotgun and was taken into custody after opening fire at a Secret Service agent ​in the Washington Hilton Hotel, outside the ballroom where the event was ​attended by President Donald Trump, his wife, Melania, Vice President JD Vance, and several cabinet secretaries.