The parents of Sarah Beckstrom, the 20-year-old National Guard member who was killed in an ambush-style attack while patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., a day before Thanksgiving, will be among the special guests at President Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday.
Another guest for the speech at the U.S. Capitol will be 7-year-old Dalilah Coleman, who was critically injured in a six-car pileup in California allegedly caused by a truck driver who was in the country illegally, White House officials told CBS News.
Mr. Trump intends to acknowledge these guests during the part of his speech on the southern border and homeland security.
When Coleman was 5 years old, a commercial tractor-trailer crashed into the car she was riding in, fracturing her skull, breaking her femur and causing a traumatic brain injury, according to her father, Marcus Coleman, who is also a truck driver, and her mother, Ileana Krause.
A man from India, Partap Singh, was undocumented but was driving with a valid driver’s license issued in California when, according to the Department of Homeland Security, he failed to stop for traffic and a construction zone.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials took Singh into custody in August 2025.
Since emerging from a coma after the crash, Dalilah Coleman has been recovering but is nonverbal and has diplegic cerebral palsy, her family has said.
Mr. Trump also invited Evalea and Gary Beckstrom, the mother and father of Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, one of the two West Virginia National Guard members who was shot not far from the White House on Nov. 26.
The other, Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, underwent surgery and is recovering.
The suspect, an Afghan national, pleaded not guilty this month to multiple charges, including first-degree murder, as well as two counts of assault with intent to kill in connection with two Guard members who subdued him at the scene.
“He went cuckoo. I mean, he went nuts,” Mr. Trump has said of the shooter. “It happens too often with these people.”
Beckstrom worked for a behavioral health agency before her deployment, supporting those at risk of psychiatric hospitalization.
She volunteered to serve in the Trump administration’s D.C. National Guard deployment and was assigned to the 863rd Military Police Company, 111th Engineer Brigade at the time of the shooting.
