USA: On November 12, a 55-year-old doctor shot a building manager and four other people in Washington, D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood.
According to the reports, the doctor allegedly shot the building manager over an ongoing dispute about mold and maintenance issues in the building.
The doctor then barricaded himself in an apartment and later was found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
On November 13, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) confirmed that a sixth victim had been identified. The woman sustained a non-life-threatening gunshot graze wound and treated herself. The updated count brings the total number of victims to six, including one person killed and five injured.
According to the police, the suspect was identified as Matt Wade Lambert, a 55-year-old doctor.
Lambert described himself on his professional website as a board-certified emergency physician with more than two decades of clinical experience. According to Docinfo.org, he also holds active medical licenses in West Virginia and Montana.
His professional website identifies him as the founder of MLEM, a healthcare and technology consultancy. It also says he led large-scale electronic health record implementations at institutions including Bellevue in New York City and Harborview in Seattle.
Becker’s Hospital Review reported that he previously served as chief medical information officer at NYC Health + Hospitals and held leadership roles at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of Washington.
Lambert shot and killed one man inside a gym before firing at people from his apartment, police said.
Gunfire erupted around 8 a.m. in Logan Circle, about a mile north of the White House. Officers blocked off most of the 15th Street Northwest block and warned the public away from the neighborhood, home to a VIDA fitness center, St. Luke's Episcopal Church, apartments, and a Whole Foods supermarket. Nearby schools initiated lockdowns.
According to Axios, nearly a dozen schools were placed under lockdown, while residents were instructed to shelter in place. Police said the shooting sequence unfolded in less than five minutes.
Law enforcement SWAT teams and officers aimed their guns from the roof of an apartment building and the street below.
Lambert allegedly shot Building Manager James Stuart, who was declared dead at the scene. The other people who were harmed in the incident were then taken to local hospitals.
Stuart, 46, was also a longtime member of VIDA Fitness, where he had worked out for approximately 15 years. People who knew him called him Jimmy. The gym's CEO and founder, David von Storch, described him as a respected and beloved member of the community.
The police believe that Dr. Lambert opened fire inside the gym and then fled the scene. He then proceeded to fire at four more people who were on the ground level from his balcony, which was on the seventh floor.
Police subsequently identified a sixth victim, an adult woman who sustained a non-life-threatening gunshot graze wound and treated herself. The initial police account had identified five victims, including Stuart, before the additional victim was located.
Interim Chief Jeffery Carroll from the Metropolitan Police Department said at a news conference, “He did fire through the door at officers at least on two occasions.”
Negotiators were on the phone with Dr. Matt when they heard a gunshot, and just after that, he stopped speaking with them, according to Carroll.
Officers then went inside the apartment, and once they saw his body, they could see that he had shot himself. However, the authorities are still working on getting more information about the suspect’s motives and intentions.
An X account that seems to be associated with Dr. Lambert posted a manifesto on Thursday morning, the day of the shooting.
The manifesto included a screenshot of a document with Dr. Lambert’s name on it. The post read, “My manifesto is an engineering report.”
Carroll said, "We do know that there has been an ongoing dispute between the suspect in this case and the building, condo, homeowners association management regarding maintenance issues, mold and the like.”
The X account named “Ofmiceandmould” had posted tons of pictures about the problems in the building. Many screenshots of documents with Lambert’s name on them were also posted, including a lawsuit in which Lambert was the plaintiff.
The Washington Post reported that Lambert spoke to another building manager, Charelle Ferguson, shortly after the shooting began. According to Ferguson, Lambert expressed frustration over the mold and water damage in his condominium and said, "The only way people will pay attention, you have to do something." She also told the newspaper that he admitted to shooting five people during their phone conversation.
According to the police, one of the victims is in critical condition. It is not yet confirmed whether the suspect had relations with the other victims.
Authorities recovered three firearms from the suspect's apartment, all of which he used in Thursday's incident.
Officer Carroll said, "It does appear there was some level of planning associated with this."
It is unclear how Dr. Lambert obtained the weapons, as there were no firearms registered in his name in Washington, DC.
According to the police, the suspect also had containers of flammable liquid in his apartment.
Officer Carroll said, "We do suspect that there was probably some level of accelerant. We don't know if it was gasoline or something else, so we do believe there probably was some level of pouring there."
Police also said Lambert allegedly broke a gas line connected to his fireplace and started a fire inside his apartment during the barricade. Flames were visible outside the building, but the sprinkler system helped contain the fire. Investigators recovered gasoline and other flammable materials from the apartment.
According to a report by Medpage Today, witness James Spellman, who was at the gym during the shooting, said there were around 50 people in the gym at 8 am in the morning.
Spellman said, "Within seconds, there was a man who fell to the ground, and a pool of blood came out. One gym member rushed to help him. He was instantly dead. He had been shot in the neck."
He said that everyone rushed out of the gym after the incident, and they could hear about five to six gunshots outside the building.
Police said that after shooting Stuart inside the gym, Lambert went up to his seventh-floor apartment and fired at four additional people from his balcony before barricading himself inside. An additional woman with a non-life-threatening graze wound was identified by police the following day.
Another witness said that the sound of the gunshots was spaced out, so he thought that it was construction noise, but a while later, he saw cops everywhere.
According to the reports, the civil legal battle over the mold and water issues has cost Matt Wade Lambert over $300,000, according to his attorney Joel Braithwaite. Lambert bought the property in Washington, DC, for over $1 million in 2016, and it was his most valued asset.
Court records reported by The Washington Post show that Lambert sought at least $300,000 in damages in his lawsuit against the condominium association and property management company. Axios separately reported that Lambert had previously told a reporter he had spent nearly $200,000 on legal and engineering fees.
Shortly after moving in, he began having water leaks and mold issues, costing him thousands to resolve. Eventually, he had to move out of the apartment and into his country home in West Virginia.
The legal battle has been costly for Lambert; he has now spent over $300,000 of his own money and will continue to incur costs.
However, the allegations were disputed. The condominium association and EJF Real Estate Services denied responsibility for the reported damage. In subsequent court filings, the association argued that a commercial exhaust system operated by VIDA Fitness and its landlord might have contributed to the mold problem. VIDA's owners and the landlords disputed this allegation. The lawsuit remained ongoing at the time of the shooting.
Braithwaite said that James Stuart, the building manager who was killed in Thursday's shooting, was a key witness in the civil case.
He had been providing information to the condominium board. Braithwaite said he was shocked by the shooting and had never known Lambert to own a gun. He also said that the shooting happened on the anniversary of Lambert's mother's passing.
(Rh/ARC/MSM)