Anthony Mirones was on a treadmill when he heard a loud bang that he assumed was a popped exercise ball.
Logan Circle was starting to stir. Parents herded their children to school along 15th Street NW. Pet owners walked their dogs. Construction workers toiled at a condo building site.
At Vida Fitness in the Metropole building near the intersection of 15th and P streets, Mirones and dozens of others were starting their day with a workout.
Sahil Kapoor, 26, was walking down the stairs into the gym shortly before 8 a.m. when he heard gunshots. He didn’t see the shooter. He did see the aftermath.
“I saw the guy fall over, and there was blood pouring everywhere,” Kapoor said.
Mirones walked toward the noise and saw a middle-aged man on the floor, he said.
“So then I’m connecting dots, a loud bang, I’m thinking gunshots,” he said. “Then I see blood on the floor.”
He ran. “Everyone just ran.”
In a matter of minutes, the ordinary weekday morning bustle of a popular Washington neighborhood had been thrown into chaos. In the end, one victim would be dead and four others shot. The gunman, identified as a man angry over a dispute with building managers, would take his own life after setting fire to his apartment.
Abe Jaussen said he and about 40 other people in the gym barricaded themselves in the basement.
Several other neighbors said they heard loud booms around 8, some assuming the noises were fireworks or a car backfiring.
Shots were coming from a balcony on the building’s top floor.
Residents took cover in their apartments. Schools and businesses locked down. Scores of heavily armed D.C. police officers and federal agents swarmed to the scene.
According to D.C. police and multiple witness accounts, a man carrying a handgun shot and killed one of the managers of the condo building inside the gym.
The attacker was identified by police as Matt Lambert, an emergency physician who lived in the building and had been involved in a long-standing dispute with the building’s management over mice and mold in his unit.
After leaving the gym, Lambert barricaded himself in his seventh-floor condo at the 90-unit Metropole, according to police, and shot four more people on the street from his balcony. Photographs of the scene showed law enforcement officers in tactical gear on nearby rooftops and terraces with weapons trained on the apartment. Officials do not yet know whether there is any relationship between Lambert and his other four victims, police said.
The suspect fired through the door of his apartment while communicating with emergency teams, interim D.C. police chief Jeffery Carroll said in a midmorning news briefing. Later, Carroll said that while police teams were talking with him, Lambert broke the gas line inside of his apartment fireplace and started a fire. Flames were visible on the outside of the apartment. The fire was contained and eventually put out.
Officers then heard a gunshot and forced entry into the apartment, Carroll said.
“While our negotiators we’re communicating with the suspect, they did hear a single gunshot,” Carroll said. “At which time the suspect stopped talking to the officers.”
The gunman was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Lambert had shot himself, police said.
Police said they believe the gunman was a member of the fitness club and that he had an ongoing dispute with the homeowners association of his apartment building
They identified the man killed in the gym as James Stuart, a manager at the building. He had been a property manager with EJF Real Estate for 13 years, according to a statement from the company lamenting his death in “a senseless act of violence.”
“We are devastated. Jimmy was more than a colleague; he was part of the fabric of this company. Our hearts are with his family and everyone who loved him,” said Scott Burka, president of EJF Real Estate Services.
Police said the individuals who were shot outside the gym, two men and two women, were transferred to a local hospitals and described one of the surviving victims as “seriously injured.”
Two were construction workers at the site of a new condo building going up across the street.
“We’re devastated,” D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said at the news briefing. “Someone was killed in our city this morning, a senseless act of gun violence. Many D.C. residents awakened to this news and were very scared. ”
Bowser said she was “very grateful to [D.C. police] and fire and EMS who responded immediately, quickly, and contained the situation.” She added that she had briefed the White House on the shooting.
Karrina Ferris, who lives three blocks from the shooting, said her dog wouldn’t stop howling. “It’s sad … this neighborhood is a special spot in D.C.,” she said. “It’s homey and sweet, and the community is really strong.”
D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D), who chairs the council’s public safety committee, praised the police response and encouraged her neighbors and other residents who may have been shaken by the violence to “lean into each other.” Pinto lives a block away from the scene.
“We can’t retreat, and we have to continue living our lives in a safe and loving way,” she said. “That’s the message I really want our neighbors to think about.”
Angie Orellana Hernandez, Liam Scott, Juan Benn Jr., Tim Carman, Meagan Flynn, Dana Hedgpeth, Sammy Westfall, Danielle Paquette, Liam Bowman, Ben Conarck, Meg Kelly, Perry Stein and Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this report.
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