A newly resurfaced news clip from 2017 reveals that Cole Allen, the California teacher and game designer accused of opening fire at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, once designed an emergency brake for wheelchairs.
At the time, Allen was a student at Caltech. He was interviewed by ABC7 at an "Aging into the Future" conference in Los Angeles, where he demonstrated a prototype he had developed.
"The wheelchair brakes tend to lock the wheels, but don't actually lock the chair to the ground ... the idea with this is to prevent it from moving at all," Allen explained in the clip.
The prototype, constructed largely from PVC pipe, aimed to improve safety for wheelchair users.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Allen earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Caltech in 2017 and completed a master's in computer science at Cal State University-Dominguez Hills in 2025.
Fast forward to this past Saturday: Allen was taken into custody by the Secret Service after allegedly firing shots at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for the District of Columbia stated that Allen faces charges including using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault of a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.