Dr. Matt Lambert has been identified as the gunman who opened fire inside a Washington, DC, gym Thursday morning before killing himself following a nearly hour-long standoff.
Lambert, an emergency room physician, lived in a seventh-floor unit at 1515 15th St. NW, a condominium building in the city’s Northwest quadrant where he had been locked in a bitter dispute with the Metropole Condominium Association. The 47-year-old had filed suit against the association in March 2025, court records show, alleging that remediation work on the building’s exterior had turned his $1.1 million apartment into a mold-infested nightmare.
The lawsuit claimed his unit had experienced “no significant water intrusion, mold, moldy smells, moisture accumulation, or related damage” before workers surrounded the structure with scaffolding and drapes. After the enveloping began, the filing stated, his home “experienced suspected water intrusion, mold, significant moisture accumulation, and/or related damage.”
An X account linked to Lambert posted Wednesday, one day before the shooting, offering a grim window into his living conditions. “Two years of living in luxury (and the start of 6 months with no shower, dryer, HVAC, and cooking),” the post read, accompanied by photographs showing ongoing renovations inside the unit.
Lambert entered the ground-floor Vida Fitness gym shortly thereafter and opened fire. The attack killed at least one person and left four others injured, according to DC police. He then fled back to his seventh-floor apartment, barricaded himself inside, and remained there for nearly an hour before taking his own life.
Ward 2 Council Member Brooke Pinto, who both represents and resides in the area, confirmed preliminary information pointed to a targeted attack. “It’s just so sad and so senseless to kill someone over a dispute that should be worked out reasonably,” she said. Pinto added that investigators believed Lambert “had been in active litigation with over a condo issue” and that the shooter appeared to be targeting someone inside the fitness center.
DC police said they were actively investigating the conflict with the homeowners’ association as the motive behind the violence. The shooting erupted in the early morning hours at the popular gym, which sits on the ground level of the same building where Lambert had spent months documenting what he described as uninhabitable conditions.
The March 2025 lawsuit had sought relief from the association for the alleged damage, marking what appeared to be the escalation of a prolonged feud over the building’s remediation project. Lambert’s social media posts in the final hours before the attack emphasized the collapse of his domestic life, contrasting his earlier “two years of living in luxury” with half a year without basic amenities.
The Metropole Condominium Association had not responded to the lawsuit publicly before Thursday’s violence. The building’s exterior work, intended as repair and improvement, instead became the center of a legal and ultimately fatal confrontation that spilled from court filings into a public fitness center where unsuspecting patrons had gathered for morning workouts.
