A doctor embroiled in a long-running fight with his DC condominium building over mold and water damage shot and killed the building’s manager inside a crowded gym Thursday morning, then opened fire on four more people from his penthouse patio before taking his own life during a standoff with police, authorities said.
The violence unfolded around 8 a.m. in the Logan Circle neighborhood, about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the White House, bringing a busy residential and commercial district to a halt as heavily armed officers flooded the streets.
Jeffery Carroll, interim chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, identified the gunman as Matt Lambert, 55, a physician. Lambert fatally shot himself inside his seventh-floor apartment while speaking by phone with police negotiators, Carroll said, as reported by The Associated Press.
The man killed was James Stuart, 46, the building’s manager, who was shot inside the VIDA Fitness gym on the ground floor, Carroll said.
“There has been an ongoing dispute between the suspect” and building management, the chief said. “We believe it’s related to that.”
Gunfire from a penthouse patio
The first officers reached the scene within 30 seconds of the initial call and found at least one victim, Carroll told reporters, Reuters said. While clearing an adjacent residential building, officers came under fire from the seventh floor, where Lambert had barricaded himself.
Carroll said Lambert shot four people from his condo patio. One was in critical condition, and the other three appeared to have injuries that were not life-threatening, police told CNN.
Negotiators reached Lambert by phone, a law enforcement official told Reuters. During the conversations, he complained about the building’s homeowners association. When negotiators heard a gunshot, officers forced their way inside and found him dead of a self-inflicted wound, the official said.
Years of complaints over mold
Court records show Lambert had been locked in a dispute with building management over mold and moisture in his unit. In a lawsuit filed last year, he alleged that he had been unable to enjoy his penthouse since 2024 because of mold, moisture and water intrusion that he said began after a contractor worked on the building’s exterior.
The case was still pending, with mediation scheduled for next March, court filings show. Lambert appeared to document his grievances, including photos and an engineering report, on an X account titled OfMiceandMold, the AP said.
‘He was instantly dead’
James Spellman, who was in the gym, said about 50 people were inside when the shooting started.
“Within seconds there was a man who fell to the ground, and a pool of blood came out,” he said. “One gym member rushed to help him. He was instantly dead. He had been shot in the neck.”
Anthony Mirones was in the cardio area when he heard a loud bang and initially thought something had fallen off a wall. As someone tried to help the wounded man, a fire alarm sounded and people fled. “The people in cardio had to step over the body,” he said.
Another witness told Reuters he saw a man run to the victim. “Blood was pouring immediately, and he said, ‘He’s dead,'” the witness said. “We didn’t know if the gunman was still on the premises, so we just ran frantically.”
Residents of apartments above the gym evacuated when an alarm sounded, assuming it was a fire drill until they heard gunshots. “From there, we just started sprinting,” resident Max Smith told CNN affiliate WUSA. He said about 10 people hid in the bathroom of a nearby coffee shop. “I’m very shaken up,” Smith said. “You don’t expect it.”
Ryan Dubicki, an AP employee who lives nearby, said he heard about five widely spaced bangs and assumed it was construction. Soon, “there were cops everywhere.”
Neighborhood locked down
Police sealed off much of the block on 15th Street Northwest, home to the gym, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, apartments and a Whole Foods store. Nearby schools were locked down. SWAT officers took positions on rooftops with weapons drawn as helicopters circled overhead and dozens of police vehicles lined the streets. “There’s an active shooter,” one officer shouted to pedestrians heading to work, CNN said.
Mayor Muriel Bowser said she was “devastated” by the loss of life in a “senseless act of gun violence.” She praised the rapid police response and said the White House had been briefed.
Logan Circle drew national attention in August 2025, when a former member of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency was assaulted there by teenagers allegedly attempting a carjacking. Days later, Trump placed the city’s policing under federal control and deployed hundreds of National Guard troops, a deployment that continues.
A private dispute that turned deadly in public
Thursday’s shooting stands apart from many high-profile attacks because, according to police, it grew out of a personal grievance rather than ideology or random violence. Court filings and Lambert’s online postings depict a man consumed by a property dispute that had dragged on for at least two years. That trajectory is likely to draw attention to how long-running conflicts, especially those involving housing and litigation, can escalate, and whether warning signs were visible.
The setting magnified the danger. A ground-floor gym at the start of the workday, beneath residential units and beside a church and grocery store, meant dozens of bystanders were in the line of fire. The decision to shoot from an elevated patio, police said, turned a targeted killing into a wider threat to people on the street below.
The police response, with officers on scene within half a minute and negotiators engaged quickly, likely limited further harm. The incident is nonetheless certain to feed the ongoing debate over public safety in the capital. Supporters of the federal deployment may cite the event as evidence of persistent risks, while critics may argue it shows that targeted violence of this kind is difficult to prevent through broader policing strategies alone.
Investigators are expected to focus on how Lambert obtained his weapon, whether he had made threats before and whether the building or courts had received prior warnings. For Logan Circle residents, the attack shatters a morning routine in one of the city’s most popular neighborhoods and leaves a building manager dead over a dispute that was still working its way through the courts.
Sources: The Associated Press (AP); CNN; CNN affiliate WUSA; Reuters
