WASHINGTON (AP) — Social media posts that appear to match the California man arrested Saturday in the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner show he is a highly educated tutor and amateur video game developer.
A May 2025 profile photo of Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, appears to match the appearance of the man in a photo of the alleged attacker being taken into custody that was posted Saturday night by President Donald Trump. The photo, posted to the social networking site LinkedIn, shows him in a cap and gown after graduating with a master’s degree in computer science from California State University-Dominguez Hills.
Allen, 31, earned a bachelor’s degree in 2017 in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He listed his involvement there in a Christian student fellowship and a campus group that battled with Nerf guns.
Bin Tang, a computer science professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills, told The Associated Press that Allen took a few of his classes before graduating.
“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. I am very shocked to see the news,” Tang wrote in an email.
A local ABC station in Los Angeles included an interview with Allen during his senior year of college as part of a story about new technologies to help people as they age. He had developed a prototype for a new type of emergency brake for wheelchairs.
Allen contributed $25 to a Democratic Party political action committee in support of Kamala Harris for president in 2024, according to federal campaign finance records.
Allen's online resume says he worked for the last six years at C2 Education, a company that offers admissions counseling and test preparation services to aspiring college students. A 2024 post on the company’s Facebook page listed Allen as the company’s teacher of the month. The company did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Saturday night.
Allen also posted that he had developed a video game for the Steam platform based on molecular chemistry. A post under Allen’s name said he was working to develop a new “top-down shooter” combat game set in outer space.
Members of law enforcement respond during the White House Correspondents Dinner, Saturday, April 25, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)
A law enforcement officer sets up police tape near an address connected to Cole Tomas Allen, the shooting suspect at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday, April 25, 2026, in Torrance, Calif. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
SLAVUTYCH, Ukraine (AP) — People streamed into the central square of Slavutych in the early hours of Sunday, placing candles on a large radiation hazard symbol laid out on the ground as a midnight commemoration began for those killed in the Chernobyl disaster 40 years ago and the thousands who risked deadly radiation exposure to contain its aftermath.
Residents show up for the vigil each year despite wartime curfews and official warnings against large gatherings during Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The April 26, 1986 disaster shone a spotlight on lax safety standards and government secrecy in what was then the Soviet Union. The explosion was not reported by Soviet authorities for two days, only after winds had carried the fallout across Europe and Swedish experts had gone public with their concerns.
About 600,000 people, often referred to as Chernobyl’s “liquidators,” were sent in to fight the fire at the nuclear plant and clean up the worst of its contamination. Thirty workers died within months from either the explosion or acute radiation sickness. The accident exposed millions in the region to dangerous levels of radiation and forced a wide-scale, permanent evacuation of hundreds of towns and villages in Ukraine and Belarus.
The city of Slavutych, around 50 kilometers (32 miles) from the former plant, dates to this period. While most evacuees were resettled across nearby districts in Kyiv region, in late 1986 Soviet authorities began building what would become the city to house workers from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and their families. The first residents moved in around 1988.
Since then, the city has endured a brief Russian occupation during Moscow’s failed push to seize the Ukrainian capital in early days of the war, as well as harsh winters — especially the last one, when blackouts forced some residents to cook meals over open fires in the streets.
People of all ages gathered in the square, some arriving as families carrying spring tulips and daffodils. They lined up in a broad plaza framed by Soviet-era apartment blocks, where a memorial stands near a row of posters honoring local residents killed in the war.
Liudmyla Liubyva, 71, came to the ceremony with a friend. She used to attend with her husband, who worked at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant but later developed a disability linked to radiation exposure, and lost the ability to walk, she said.
Liubyva said it was important to honor those who sacrificed their health in the aftermath of the disaster, but Russia’s war has revived fears that the danger was never fully left behind.
“When the drone struck the arch, it felt like the world could return to 1986,” she said, referring to a Russian drone strike in 2025 that damaged the New Safe Confinement structure, the massive dome built to contain radiation from the destroyed reactor. “We all — young and old alike — must protect our land, because it is so vulnerable.”
Soft music played in the background as poetry about the disaster drifted over loudspeakers. “Years pass, generations change, but the pain of Chernobyl does not fade,” a woman’s voice recited. As the words echoed across the square, people dressed in white protective suits and face masks, symbolizing the liquidators, stood in silence holding candles.
Larysa Panova, 67, often recalls the day of the accident that forced her to leave her native hometown of Chernobyl, which transliterate as Chornobyl, and begin a new life in Slavutych. Though the new city has long since become home, she still thinks of the forests and rich nature of the place she left behind.
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, she regularly travelled back to visit relatives who remained there or simply to spend time in the land where she grew up. But with the war, access to the exclusion zone became restricted.
“I never stop thinking of Chernobyl as my homeland,” she said. “You remember your school, your childhood, your youth — everything happened there, in Chernobyl.”
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AP reporters Vasilisa Stepanenko and Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kyiv contributed.
Additional AP coverage of the nuclear landscape: https://apnews.com/projects/the-new-nuclear-landscape/
People bring candles at a memorial dedicated to firefighters and workers who died after the 1986 Chornobyl (Chernobyl) nuclear disaster, ahead of its 40th anniversary in Slavutych, Ukraine, Saturday, April 25, 2026. Chornobyl is the Ukrainian name for the city. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
People bring candles at a memorial dedicated to firefighters and workers who died after the 1986 Chornobyl (Chernobyl) nuclear disaster, ahead of its 40th anniversary in Slavutych, Ukraine, Saturday, April 25, 2026. Chornobyl is the Ukrainian name for the city. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
A man lights a candle at a memorial dedicated to firefighters and workers who died after the 1986 Chornobyl (Chernobyl) nuclear disaster, ahead of its 40th anniversary in Slavutych, Ukraine, Saturday, April 25, 2026. Chornobyl is the Ukrainian name for the city. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
Candles arranged into a radiation hazard symbol at a memorial dedicated to firefighters and workers who died after the 1986 Chornobyl (Chernobyl) nuclear disaster, ahead of its 40th anniversary in Slavutych, Ukraine, Saturday, April 25, 2026. Chornobyl is the Ukrainian name for the city. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
A man dressed in white protective suits holds a candle during a memorial service dedicated to firefighters and workers who died after the 1986 Chornobyl (Chernobyl) nuclear disaster, ahead of its 40th anniversary in Slavutych, Ukraine, Saturday, April 25, 2026.Chornobyl is the Ukrainian name for the city. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
