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Was ‘armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives’
A “teacher of the month” is the suspect in the latest assassination attempt against President Trump, this time at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
According to the New York Post, 31-year-old teacher Cole Tomas Allen of California “charged toward the ballroom” at the Washington Hilton where the dinner was held — before opening fire.
A Secret Service officer was hit in his bulletproof vest, but reportedly is “doing great.”
Allen, a teacher at the C2 Education test preparation and tutoring service where he was named December 2024’s “Teacher of the Month,” was allegedly “armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives,” according to the report.
Allen graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 2017 with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, according to the LinkedIn profile.
A spokeswoman for Caltech told the New York Times that a person named Cole Allen had earned an undergraduate degree in 2017, but the school did not have any further information immediately available.
Allen’s neighbor, who gave the name Jeff Smith, told The Post that “maybe he could be on the spectrum.”
Federal Election Commission records show he donated $25 to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in October 2024.
A Fox News report notes Allen designed “first-person shooter” video games, one of which involved role-playing “based on realistic two-dimensional space combat.”
Another called “Bohrdom” is “a complex 2-D physics-based video game […] described as a ‘combination of a racing game with a bullet hell as experienced by self-propelled pinballs.'”
In 2014, Allen reportedly was an “undergraduate research student fellow” at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Allen “appeared to be targeting” members of the president’s administration, CNN reported early Sunday morning.
CBS News noted U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said Allen would be arraigned Monday on charges of “using a firearm during a crime of violence, and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon.”
UPDATE: Allen apparently wrote a manifesto before the shooting; it is summarized here.
MORE: Dallas teacher ‘assassinates’ Donald Trump in class with water pistol
