Authorities have determined that buckshot fired during the attempted storming of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner struck a Secret Service agent, the federal prosecutor overseeing the case said this week.
The investigation’s focus includes long-standing questions about which shot injured the officer as the suspect ran through security with a long gun toward the ballroom at a Washington hotel on April 25, where journalists and administration officials were present, according to the prosecutor leading the inquiry.
U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro previously said there was no evidence the agent was hit by friendly fire, and she expanded on that account in later remarks, including a TV interview in which she described what prosecutors say investigators can now establish about the vest that protected the officer.
Pirro told CNN’s “State of the Union” that investigators have linked the source of the pellet to the defendant’s weapon, saying, “We now can establish that a pellet that came from the buckshot from the defendant’s Mossberg pump-action shotgun was intertwined with the fiber of the vest of the Secret Service officer.” She added, “It is definitively his bullet.”
Prosecutors have also said the man charged, Cole Tomas Allen, was injured during the attack but not shot, and the Secret Service officer survived, according to Pirro’s remarks. Allen has been charged with attempted assassination of President Donald Trump and two additional firearms counts, including discharging a weapon during a crime of violence.
The AP reported that Allen’s attorneys on Sunday filed a court document after learning he was no longer on suicide watch, and they sought to withdraw a motion requesting that he be removed from such supervision. A phone call to lawyers representing Allen went unanswered on Sunday, the report said.
Allen, who remains jailed pending trial, has been described as 31 years old and from Torrance, California, and as having worked as a part-time tutor for a test preparation company while developing amateur video games, according to the AP’s account of the case.
On Thursday, Pirro posted a video on social media showing what authorities said was a moment when a man with guns and knives attempted to storm the media gala, as questions continued to linger about the origin of the shot that hit the officer’s vest.