Save<\/a>Share this articleCopy LinkEmailFacebookTwitter\/XLinkedInReddit<\/p>\nAgents draw their guns after loud bangs were heard during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, yesterday. Photo \/ Mandel Ngan, AFP<\/p>\n
The man suspected in the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner shooting wrote a statement saying he wanted to target members of United States President Donald Trump\u2019s Administration, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the document. <\/p>\n
\n Acting Attorney-General Todd Blanche said that the suspect in custody, identified as Cole
\n Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, appeared to be targeting members of the Trump Administration, and potentially Trump, but that the information was \u201cquite preliminary\u201d.\n <\/p>\n
Officials based their assessment on Allen\u2019s writings, including a statement he sent to members of his family before the shooting, investigators said. <\/p>\n
Washington DC interim police chief Jeffery Carroll said yesterday that Allen was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and knives when he charged through a security checkpoint towards the ballroom at the Washington Hilton, where hundreds of journalists, politicians and celebrities were gathered for the dinner.<\/p>\n
Allen will be charged with two counts of using a firearm during a crime of violence and one count of assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon, US Attorney for Washington DC Jeanine Pirro said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amy B Wang Washington Post\u00b7 26 Apr, 2026 07:13 PM2 mins to read Subscribe to listenAccess to Herald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3225,2438,206008,206009,2946,17246,2178,17900,29467,42,10053,4754,43,10711,2572,2687,7819,9343,9939,19687,8841,8225,40,38,41,39,2179,19096,9938,5828,16550,102,30812],"class_list":["post-398990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-according","tag-administration","tag-correspondents","tag-denouncing","tag-dinner","tag-document","tag-donald","tag-enforcement","tag-familiar","tag-headlines","tag-house","tag-members","tag-news","tag-officials","tag-president","tag-saying","tag-shooting","tag-statement","tag-states","tag-suspect","tag-suspected","tag-target","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trump","tag-trumps","tag-united","tag-wanted","tag-white","tag-with","tag-wrote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}