D.C. police have raised the number of victims in the deadly shooting at a Logan Circle gym and condominium building to six.
Thursday’s attack at the multi-story VIDA Fitness and condo building left two people dead, including the gunman, Matt Lambert.
The sixth victim was a woman who was grazed by a bullet inside the gym, said Interim Police Chief Jeffery Carroll, speaking at a news conference Friday. She was treated on-site and released; three other victims of the shooting were briefly hospitalized for minor injuries, and a fifth victim remains in the hospital in critical but stable condition.
Lambert, who lived in the building above the gym, killed James Stuart, the building’s property manager, before heading to his seventh-floor penthouse, from where he used a high-powered rifle to fire more shots at unsuspecting people below. He later barricaded himself in the unit and, after unsuccessful negotiations with police, turned a gun on himself.
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Inside Lambert’s unit, police found several hundred rounds of ammunition, and an accelerant that was used to start a fire in the unit, Carroll said. While there had been no prior calls to 911 to indicate a deadly confrontation was brewing, Carroll said it appeared that Lambert planned the shooting.
“We believe there’s some level of planning there,” he said. “We do believe that he plotted this. We know that he had been in the gym for almost an hour before the victim walked in. So we do believe that he was waiting for him, and after that, he had a plan of what he was going to do.”
Carroll said police have viewed gym video that shows Lambert shooting Stuart, who was walking on a treadmill as he frequently did at that hour. “It doesn’t appear to be any sort of a conversation. He walks up behind him. So I’m not even sure that the victim knew that he was behind,” he said.
As The Washington Sun reported Thursday, Lambert had been engaged in long-running and costly litigation over allegations that buildingwide renovations had caused water leaks and mold inside his $1.1 million penthouse. He told Sun reporter Michael Brice-Saddler late last year that the legal fight had cost him over $200,000 and had impacted his emotional and mental health. Thursday evening, his attorney said the leap to deadly violence was unexpected.
“This week when I spoke to him he was in great spirits,” said the attorney, Joel Braithwaite. “He had just had some new beginnings on the horizon, starting a new job on Monday. So I’m at a loss for how things took any sort of turn that would have us here today.”
Carroll said that as police negotiators spoke with Lambert while he was barricaded inside his unit, the legal battle was the main topic of conversation.
Police have wrapped up their investigation inside the building — known as The Metropole — but Carroll said it remains uninhabitable due to water damage, a lack of electricity and the severing by Lambert of his unit’s gas line. Residents have been allowed in to retrieve pets and personal belongings, but it remains unclear when they might be able to return permanently.
Speaking alongside Carroll, Mayor Muriel Bowser called the shooting a “significant tragedy” and said it confirmed her belief that too many conflicts in D.C. turn fatal due to the presence of guns. Lambert’s three guns were not registered in D.C., and police are working with federal agents to trace their point of origin in West Virginia, where Lambert had a second home.
“We do know that the presence of guns in the wrong person’s hands can equal destruction,” Bowser said. “And so we can never lose sight of making sure we have every tool possible to rid people of guns who shouldn’t have guns.”
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