MS NOW-3 days after correspondents' dinner, FBI still unsure who shot officer outside ballroom

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The Secret Service officer was wearing a bulletproof vest, but sources say investigators haven’t found the fragment that pierced it — and can’t definitively say whether it came from the suspect.

NEW: 3 days after correspondents’ dinner, FBI still unsure who shot officer outside ballroom www.ms.now/news/three-d...

— Ana Cabrera (@anacabrera.bsky.social) 2026-04-28T17:48:32.542Z

https://www.ms.now/news/three-days-after-correspondents-dinner-fbi-still-unsure-who-shot-officer-outside-ballroom

The FBI has not found the fragment that pierced a Secret Service officer’s bulletproof vest at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, leaving investigators unable to say for certain whether the armed attacker shot the officer or how he was injured, according to two people briefed on the probe.

Law enforcement agents on the scene Saturday believe Cole Tomas Allen, the suspect who breached the dinner’s final checkpoint, fired his shotgun and struck the officer with buckshot from his weapon, according to one of the people, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the ongoing probe. A check of Allen’s shotgun showed that he discharged a shell but did not reload, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters Monday.....

Here are other new details MS NOW has learned about the incident:

No officers or agents were stationed in the stairwell that Allen used to get to the main hotel floor and just steps from the checkpoint he breached. Investigators’ review of hotel video shows Allen reached the checkpoint, where magnetometers screened guests for weapons, by walking down the stairwell 10 floors down from his hotel room, one of the people said.

“He didn’t dilly dally once he got there,” one person who saw the footage said. “He just immediately went for the checkpoint.”

The Secret Service does not require agents in stairwells of this public hotel when they are outside the magnetometer-screened perimeter of the dinner event.

In its review, a Secret Service team estimated that Allen was running nine miles an hour, one person in the briefing said, and then stumbled somehow and fell a few yards from the checkpoint. That raises the question among law enforcement professionals of how a person moving that fast could have stopped and fired his weapon at an officer behind him.

After Allen fell, agents and officers jumped on top of him to tackle and subdue him, two people told MS NOW. But initially, law enforcement on the scene believed one of them had shot Allen because he was not immediately responsive, a law enforcement official said.

Allen’s mother and father are cooperating with FBI agents leading the investigation into the incident and Allen’s self-professed plans to kill Trump administration officials gathered at the dinner. Investigators have learned that Allen’s brother had growing concerns in recent weeks with an uptick in disturbing rhetoric from Allen, according to one of the people.

The Secret Service on Monday began a sweeping internal investigation to determine whether there were any security lapses or a need for hardening security protocols as a result of the breach. Known as a Mission Assurance Review, this investigation is run by the Service’s Office of Professional Responsibility and is often considered a way to learn lessons from a serious incident and improve security in the future.

The FBI declined to comment to MS NOW......

Blanche said investigators determined that the agent who was shot fired five rounds at the suspect, none of which hit him. But he said they could not be sure those were the only rounds fired by law enforcement officers.

“When you fire a bullet, it ends up somewhere,” he said. “Sometimes you find it and sometimes you don’t.”