The doctor gunman who killed one person and wounded four others in northwest Washington DC on Thursday attributed the attack to his long-running frustrations with the management of the condominium complex where he lived, according to a building manager who spoke with him shortly after the shooting.
Charelle Ferguson, a building manager for the Metropole, said Matt Lambert answered the phone around 9am (local time) when she called him – as she had been calling other residents after the shooting – to see whether he was OK.
He said that he was tired of the mould and water damage in his unit, which, he’d told her previously, had rendered it unlivable.
Sign up to The Nightly’s newsletters.
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.
By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.
“The only way people will pay attention, you have to do something,” he said, Ferguson recalled in an interview with The Washington Post. He then confessed to her that he had shot five people.
Police identified Lambert, 55, as the gunman in Thursday’s attack.
Jeffery Carroll, the interim police chief, said Lambert was known to have had long-running disputes with his condo building’s management that were believed to have prompted the attack. He had also filed a lawsuit accusing it of wrongdoing.
Those tensions boiled over just before 8am, Carroll said, when Lambert entered a Vida Fitness gym near the intersection of 15th and P streets NW and fatally shot James Stuart, 46, a manager at the condo building, with a handgun.
Lambert then barricaded himself in his condo unit nearby and shot four others with a rifle from his seventh-floor balcony, according to police.
Authorities said Lambert spoke to police for more than an hour while barricaded inside his unit, attempted to set it on fire and fired a shotgun at officers through the door. Eventually, Lambert turned a gun on himself and was pronounced dead at the scene, Carroll said.
The surviving victims are two adult women and two adult men, Carroll said. One of them remains in critical condition; the others were hospitalis zed with non-life-threatening injuries.
Stuart was a member of the gym who worked out at the same time every morning, according to David von Storch, owner of the Vida Fitness gym.
Security video showed Lambert shooting Stuart point blank in the back, von Storch said.
“It’s not random gun violence,” he said. “It’s some guy targeting his neighbour.”
Lambert, a board certified emergency room doctor, lived in a seventh-floor penthouse unit above the gym where police have said the rampage began. He paid almost $US1.1 million ($1.6m) for the one bedroom condo in 2016, according to property records. The building, which was completed in 2008, is in the affluent Logan Circle neighborhood, nearly a mile north of the White House.
In 2025, Lambert filed a lawsuit against the condo association and property management company alleging that they had failed to address the water damage, mold and elevated moisture in his unit despite his complaints over several years.
Lambert claimed the mould in his apartment, unit 704, initially appeared around 2024 after work on the building’s exterior allowed water to permeate his walls, according to court records.
In the suit, he claimed he paid for independent testing that revealed the extent of the damage. But when he invited Stuart, the property manager he later killed, into his unit to assess the issue, Stuart dismissed the mould odor by saying it “smelled like cologne,” and told Lambert he would hear from a lawyer, he claimed. Lambert sought damages of at least $300,000.
In court, the condo association and EJF Real Estate Services, the property management company, have denied responsibility for the damage. A lawyer for the condo association did not respond to The Post’s request for comment. Jennifer Oberg, vice president of client care for EJF, said that the company is cooperating with law enforcement and declined to elaborate.
In a subsequent complaint filed as part of the same lawsuit, the condominium association claimed that liability “more than likely” lies with Vida and the owners of the commercial unit where it rented space. The condo association argued that Vida and its landlord operated a commercial exhaust system that might have contributed to the mold.
Vida’s owners and its landlords denied those allegations in court records. Von Storch, the president and founder of Vida’s parent company, also denied the allegations in an interview with The Post, saying the exhaust system is “not even close” to the apartment in question. The lawsuit is ongoing.
Bullet holes are seen in the apartment building which was the scene of a shooting in Washington, DC, on November 12, 2026. Credit: KEN CEDENO/AFP
Lambert complained about the building to Metropole employees and fellow residents as well as in postings on social media.
Ferguson said they had chatted in recent months about his frustrations with the condo.
His unit, she recalled him telling her, was riddled with construction defects, leaving it vulnerable to water damage and mould. She was sympathetic to his concerns, Ferguson said. He’d always been kind to her.
“I never thought he’d do something like this,” she said.
Cole Brennan, 30, said he’d spoken to Lambert a few times since moving into the Metropole four months ago and that Lambert had mentioned that his apartment had suffered water damage.
“All he wanted to talk about was, ‘oh, this building is a s…hole,’” Brennan recalled.
An account on X that appears to have belonged to Lambert details his grievances against the building. Dozens of posts on the account called “OfMiceandMold” over the past six months include photos, videos and screenshots of court documents and internal building notices. The posts repeatedly complain about issues including air conditioning problems as well as mould and mice.
“My manifesto is an engineering report,” says a post from 8:06 a.m. Thursday, around the time the shooting began. It includes screenshots of what appears to be a report detailing deficient attempts by building management to make repairs in the unit of a “Dr. Lambert.”
Another recent post includes screenshots of the inside of an apartment in disrepair, with tarp covering the windows and furniture.
“Two years of living in luxury (and the start of 6 months with no shower, dryer, HVAC and cooking),” read the message accompanying the photos, which was last edited at 4:26 a.m. Wednesday, the day before the shootings.
Two of the account’s posts in the spring mentioned Stuart, saying he regularly spent time at Vida Fitness. “If you’re looking for the building manager, I would check the gym,” said a post in April.
“Saw the building manager at the gym today …” said one in May.
Lambert attended the medical school at Marshall University in West Virginia, according to his LinkedIn profile and state records. He worked as a physician for years before transitioning to work as a medical consultant, according to a longtime friend who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for his family’s safety.
Lambert, whom friends referred to as “Dr. Matt,” was an expert in medical IT matters, and consulted on projects involving electronic medical records, the person said.
In recent years, the person said, Lambert often appeared agitated about the dispute with his condo association, adding that “he reached the end of his rope.”
A body from the scene of a shooting at VIDA Fitness club is taken away. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Another friend, who attended medical school with Lambert and has known him since the 1990s, said he has never seen him act violently and invited him in August to stay as an overnight guest with his wife and children.
He described Lambert as a “renaissance man” who, when not working in healthcare, had made musical albums under the stage name “Doc Lambert.”
The friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said their last contact was in late October. Lambert asked to use an office at the friend’s company headquarters to conduct depositions for the condo lawsuit. The friend told Lambert that there was no available space.
“He seemed frustrated,” the friend said. “Nothing more than frustrated.”
