Fact-check: Was Usha Vance seen with White House press dinner shooter in a 2017 video?

White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting in Washington, DC, on Saturday evening (April 25) was the biggest shocker. US President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and others were rushed to safety. The shooter, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, was taken down by the Secret Service.

In the chaotic aftermath of the shooting incident, several wild claims have been made- one of which focuses on the 31-year-old WHCD shooter. A 2017 video featuring Allen has sparked widespread speculation after viewers claimed to have spotted Second Lady Usha Vance in the same clip.

Is that Usha Vance next to shooter Allen in a nearly a decade-old long video? Let's find out.

What's the claim

A very old clip of Allen from 2017 is going viral. It originally aired on ABC7 in Los Angeles, featuring Allen, who was then a student at the California Institute of Technology.

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In the clip, Allen is seen showcasing an invention at the “Ageing into the Future” conference, a technology expo focused on ageing, elder care, and innovations that improve the quality of life for older adults.

As Allen discusses the prototype emergency brake for wheelchairs in the video, he says, while speaking to a reporter, “The wheelchair brakes tend to lock the wheels, but don’t lock the chair to the ground. But with this device, that will prevent the chair from skidding at all."

That's not it. A twist in the video has surfaced. Many social media users point to a woman in the same video, whom they see as Usha Vance-like.

Now, this observation has fueled a wave of wild theories.

What's the fact

The woman in the video is not Second Lady Usha Vance.

This Ageing into the Future Conference was held in LA in March 2017, and in the same period, Usha was living in Washington, DC, where she was clerking for Chief Justice John Roberts during the Supreme Court's 2017-18 term, according to Yahoo News.

At that time, she was also expecting her son, Ewan Blaine Vance, who was born in June that year, Newsweek reported.

Grok, xAI's chatbot, also issued a fact-check.

The bot wrote, “The woman in the video is not Usha Vance. In February 2017, Vance was clerking for the Supreme Court in DC, not presenting at this LA tech conference."

Who is the woman in the video?

The woman in the video is Arati Desai Wagabaza, the founder and then-CEO of a startup company, Yahoo News reported.

In the same clip, a banner is seen behind the woman that reads "SmallCircles," the name of a startup firm that appeared at the event in 2017.

The news outlet also reviewed archived versions of SmallCircles’ now-defunct website, which showed the same woman and identified her as Arati Desai, the founder and CEO of Wagabaza.

Hence, the woman in the clip is Wagabaza — not Vance.

The White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting 

A White House Correspondents' Dinner was a gathering of politicians, journalists, and celebs- typically Washington’s biggest annual dinner. This year, the event was disrupted by a loud noise, gunfire, after a 31-year-old California man fired multiple shots.

Chaos erupted at an annual dinner of White House correspondents at the Washington Hilton when multiple shots were heard. Footage from the scene shows Secret Service agents jumping into action.

The American president and other top US officials were rushed out of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner as a gunman opened fire.

Trump described the shooter as a “very sick man,” expressing gratitude to the law enforcement officials for rescuing him from the shooting incident on Saturday (April 25).

With inputs from agencies