A gunman opened fire inside and outside a gym in Washington’s Logan Circle neighborhood Thursday morning, fatally shooting one person and injuring four others before dying from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound during a police standoff. Interim Metropolitan Police Department Chief Jeffery Carroll said emergency responders arrived within 30 seconds of a shooting report shortly before 8 a.m. at a VIDA Fitness location near 15th and P streets NW, approximately one mile from the White House. Of the four surviving victims transported to local hospitals, one remained in critical condition while three sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
Police said the suspect, later identified in news reports as Dr. Matt Wade Lambert, 55, initiated the attack inside VIDA Fitness before exiting the facility and firing additional rounds outside. Witnesses inside the gym reported hearing a loud bang that initially sounded like a popped exercise ball before discovering a victim bleeding on the floor and evacuating as fire alarms sounded. As patrons fled onto the street and sheltered inside nearby businesses, additional gunfire erupted outside, sending bystanders scattering.
Authorities said the shooter then entered an adjacent residential building above the gym, where he barricaded himself inside a seventh-floor unit and fired through the door at officers at least twice. Specialized negotiators communicated with the suspect by phone for roughly an hour as snipers positioned themselves on surrounding rooftops and flames emerged from the seventh floor of the building. Officers breached the apartment after hearing a gunshot over the phone and pronounced the suspect dead at the scene, ending a shelter-in-place order and nearby school lockdowns by 11:10 a.m.
Officials indicated the initial attack inside the gym appeared targeted and stemmed from an ongoing legal dispute between the suspect and the residential building’s homeowners association. D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto said Lambert lived in an apartment in Northwest Washington, D.C., and had been involved in active litigation with his building’s owner, noting that the building manager, identified as James Stewart, 46, was killed in the shooting. A building resident told reporters that Lambert had grown increasingly frustrated over an ongoing battle with the condo homeowner’s association and building management over complaints about maintenance and mold, and had voiced his grievances during recent board meetings and on social media.
Federal agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assisted local police in securing the cordoned-off neighborhood, though officials confirmed no Secret Service were involved. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called the shooting “a senseless act of gun violence” and said she had briefed the White House on the emergency response. “We’re devastated,” Bowser said during a morning news briefing alongside police and fire officials, praising first responders for rapidly containing the threat.
Editorial credit: Ceri Breeze / Shutterstock.com