By RIVER ZHANG and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — A gunman killed a man inside a busy gym during morning workouts on Thursday before fleeing and shooting four more people, shocking a popular capital neighborhood and attracting a swarm of police officers who ascended to the roof of the building to find him.
He fatally shot himself while holed up in his penthouse apartment, where he had been speaking by phone with police negotiators, said Jeffery Carroll, interim chief with the Metropolitan Police Department. He was identified as a medical doctor locked in a dispute with building management over mold and moisture problems in his seventh-floor unit, court records show.
Mayor Muriel Bowser said she was “devastated” at the loss of life in a “senseless act of gun violence.”
The shootings occurred around 8 a.m. in Logan Circle, about a mile (1.6 kilometers) north of the White House. Much of the block on 15th Street Northwest was cordoned off as police urged people to avoid the area, which includes the VIDA Fitness center, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, residences and a Whole Foods store. Schools were locked down.
Law enforcement SWAT teams and other officers had their guns drawn on the roof of an apartment building and on the ground below.
Carroll said one man died at VIDA and another victim was in critical condition.
Authorities have preliminarily identified the shooter as Matt Lambert, according to two law enforcement officials and another person familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t allowed to publicly discuss the investigation.
Lambert was deeply upset with his condo building’s management. He filed a lawsuit last year, alleging that he hadn’t been able to use his penthouse since 2024 because of mold, moisture and water problems. He claimed the problems began after a contractor had worked on the building’s exterior.
The litigation was ongoing, with mediation scheduled for next March, according to court filings.
James Spellman, who was at the gym, said there were about 50 people there when the shooting began.
“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 gym’s cardio area when he heard a loud bang and thought something fell off the wall. He said someone was trying to help the wounded man but then a fire alarm went off and many people ran.
“The people in cardio had to step over the body,” Mirones said.
Another witness, Ryan Dubicki, said he was in his nearby apartment around the same time when he “heard about five bangs.”
“They were really spread out so I thought it was construction,” said Dubicki, an AP employee on the elections team. A short time later “there were cops everywhere.”
The Logan Circle neighborhood has seen violence before. In early August 2025, a onetime member of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency was assaulted early on a Sunday morning in the neighborhood by a group of teenagers attempting to carjack him and a woman, authorities said.
Days later, Trump fulfilled his threat to bypass local authority and imposed direct federal control over the city, sending in hundreds of National Guard members to reduce crime. That deployment continues today.
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This story has been corrected to show the interim police chief’s name is Jeffery, not Jeffrey.
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Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana, Gary Fields and Dave Collins contributed to this report.