A Howard scholar’s account of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting

Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, has been charged with attempting to assassinate the president of the United States, transportation of a firearm in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony, and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence in connection with the April 25 shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. No one was killed, though two people were injured including the suspect. Allen has not yet entered a plea. Minutes before the attack, he sent a note to family members stating he believed it was his duty to target Trump administration officials.

Among those in the ballroom that night was Madison Maynard, a Howard University junior and 2026 WHCA scholar. This is her account.

Walking through the doors of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner ballroom, Madison Maynard said something out loud that she was not ashamed to admit.

“I can’t lie… I’m so happy to be here.”

The Howard University junior and 2026 WHCA scholar had spent hours before the dinner mingling at the reception, taking photos with fellow scholars from Howard and Hampton universities, and doing something she had dreamed about for years: meeting the journalists who inspired her to pursue this career.

She shook hands with April Ryan, the longest-serving Black White House correspondent in American history and one of Maynard’s personal idols. The two discovered a shared connection as members of the Divine Nine, Ryan a member of Delta Sigma Theta, Maynard a member of Kappa Alpha Psi. She met Lester Holt, former anchor of NBC Nightly News. She spoke with Jonathan Capehart of MSNBC and Audie Cornish, formerly of NPR and now CNN.

“It was just such an honor to tell her ‘I look up to you as who I want to be as a journalist,’” Maynard said of Ryan. “It was amazing.”

It was approximately 30 minutes into the dinner when everything changed.

People began barging into the ballroom. Then came the screaming. “Duck. Get down. Get down.”

Maynard dropped to the floor immediately, crawling under the table and pulling fellow scholars with her. Then she heard them: three gunshots.

“That’s when I realized that is what was happening,” she said. “We were in the middle of a shooting.”

From under the table, she heard what she believed was the Secret Service confirm the worst. “Affirm… shots fired.” With the stage just feet away and the president of the United States in attendance, the gravity of the moment became impossible to ignore.

“I genuinely did not know what was going on,” Maynard said. “I didn’t know if the gunman was in the ballroom. The shots were very distant, so I didn’t necessarily think it was in the room, but I didn’t know. And that was the scary part.”

Her mind raced. She realized she had left her phone on the table when she dove for cover. The thought hit her immediately that if something happened, she would not be able to say goodbye to her family. And if everyone turned out to be safe, the news would break before she could tell her parents she was okay.

“My parents would have freaked out, rightfully so,” she said. “So those things were just going through my mind. And then my mind just went to prayer.”

Other scholars began rising from under the table after several minutes. Maynard stayed down longer, waiting for something official… a word from security, an announcement, anything confirming it was safe. None came.

“No one made an announcement. No one said anything about the status of the gunman,” she said. “There were too many unanswered questions for my liking.”

When she finally rose, she did what any journalist would do. She grabbed her phone and started recording the overturned wine glasses, the shaken faces, the aftermath of a night no one in that room would forget. She texted her parents first. Then she documented everything.

In one of the stranger moments of the evening, Maynard found herself learning what had happened not from officials in the room, but from news articles on her phone.

“I was in the shooting, and people were reporting about the shooting, but I’m learning about what’s happening because I’m reading what’s on the news,” she said. “It was just really weird to think about.”

An hour and a half later, word came that the dinner would not resume. That is when a different kind of grief set in.

“I felt robbed of this opportunity,” Maynard said. “I really felt sad that I wasn’t able to have my moment to shine.”

But that feeling shifted. As she scrolled through her phone and saw the story dominating every news channel and social media platform, something clicked.

“I was actually there,” she said. “That kind of blew my mind.”

Maynard, who grew up in Cleveland and wants a career in political reporting, has come to see the night as something more than a trauma. Though she does not minimize what it was. She sees it as a preview.

“As someone who wants to go into reporting, specifically political reporting, there’s always a risk of something traumatic or dangerous happening when you’re dealing with incredibly important people,” she said. “I really think this is a preview to my life as a journalist. Unfortunately, I wish it wasn’t a shooting, but this is a preview to what my life is going to be like.”

Her closing thought was one of gratitude, mixed with purpose.

“I am grateful that everyone is safe. I am grateful that no one was killed. And I want to use my voice as a reporter to document everything that happened from my perspective, and talk about the facts of what we know. Because I was there when it happened. And I was actually there.”

For the audio verison of Madison Maynard’s accounts, visit https://hunewsservice.com/multimedia/white-house-correspondents-association-scholar-shares-lessons-from-shooting-at-annual-dinner/.