DC Gym Gunman's Own Attorney Says He Was 'doing Very Well' Day Before Rampage

Minutes inside the Logan Circle gym

The call came in just before 8 a.m. on Thursday, November 12. Officers reached VIDA Fitness, on the ground floor of a seven-story condo building in the 1500 block of 15th Street NW, within about 30 seconds, according to police. Inside, they found 46-year-old James Stuart, the building's manager, shot and dying.

A witness named James Spellman told Newsweek he was among roughly 50 people in the gym when the shooting started. "Within seconds there was a man who fell to the ground, and a pool of blood came out," Spellman said. "One gym member rushed to help him. He was instantly dead. He had been shot in the neck."

Police say the gunman, identified as Dr. Matt Lambert, 55, had gone to the gym to target Stuart specifically and left other members unharmed. He then went outside the building and kept firing, wounding bystanders on the street, before going back up to his seventh-floor apartment and firing a rifle from his balcony down onto the block, according to Around Prague's reporting on police briefings.

The standoff that ended with his own gun

Lambert barricaded himself inside his unit at the Metropole, the building where he lived. Police negotiators reached him by phone and spoke with him for roughly an hour, largely about his grievances with the condo building, interim Metropolitan Police Department Chief Jeffery Carroll told reporters.

During that hour, Carroll said, Lambert fired through his own front door at police at least twice; no officers were hurt. He also broke the gas line to his fireplace and started a fire, though building sprinklers and responding D.C. firefighters contained it. Officers then heard a final gunshot and forced their way inside.

They found Lambert with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was later pronounced dead. The New York Post reported he turned a shotgun on himself; other outlets, including WJLA and NBC News, describe only a self-inflicted gunshot wound without specifying the weapon. Police recovered three firearms in the apartment — a handgun, a rifle and a shotgun — none registered to Lambert in Washington, D.C.

"By all accounts, he was doing very well," — Joel Braithwaite, Matt Lambert's civil attorney

Who's involved

Matt Lambert, 55, was an emergency room physician who founded a healthcare and technology consultancy called MLEM. He bought the seventh-floor condo in 2016 for just over $1 million and also kept a home in West Virginia, where he grew up; his attorney said Lambert had moved back there once his dispute with the building became, in the attorney's words, untenable.

James Stuart, 46, managed the Metropole building. He was, according to Lambert's own civil attorney, "a central fact witness" in Lambert's lawsuit against the condo association and "very pivotal in relaying information to the apartment housing board." Both men used the same building gym even while the litigation was pending.

Susan Hamerski, a mother from Minnesota, was outside the building walking her daughter's dog when the gunfire reached the street. She suffered what a family spokesperson called serious and severe wounds and remains in stable condition, though she cannot currently speak.

Three other people were wounded; one remains in critical condition. None of the other injured lived in the building, according to the New York Post. None of the surviving victims other than Hamerski have been publicly identified, and this article does not speculate about who they are.

The lawsuit over mold that came first

Lambert filed a civil complaint in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in March 2025, later amended in July, against the Metropole Condominium Association and its property manager, EJF Real Estate Services. He alleged that façade repair work on the building in 2024 let water and black mold into his unit, forcing him out of the apartment by November 2024.

The suit claimed gross negligence and breach of fiduciary duty, and sought compensatory damages for inspection, testing, temporary housing, relocation and storage — costs Lambert said topped $300,000. A remote mediation session had been scheduled for next March, according to court filings cited by NBC News.

The condo association and EJF denied the allegations in their response to the amended complaint. In December 2025, the association filed its own complaint naming other parties, including the company that operates VIDA Fitness, alleging the gym's dryers and exhaust system likely contributed to the moisture problems.

Lambert also aired the dispute publicly, posting photos of the mold and portions of his engineering report under an X account using the handle "OfMiceandMold." At 8:06 a.m. Thursday — around the time of the shooting — that account posted: "Two years of living in luxury (and the start of 6 months with no shower, dryer, HVAC, and cooking)." Police have not confirmed Lambert wrote the posts.

What his attorney says happened before

Joel Braithwaite, the civil attorney who represented Lambert in the condo litigation, told reporters Thursday night that nothing about his client suggested what was coming. "By all accounts, he was doing very well," Braithwaite said, according to the Washington Post. "I'm at a loss as to how things took any sort of turn that has us here today."

Braithwaite said he last spoke with Lambert on Tuesday — two days before the shooting — and separately told Newsweek that in their "last 24 to 48 hours" of contact, Lambert "was in great spirits." Braithwaite said Lambert had just given a presentation on artificial intelligence in Orlando, Florida, over the weekend and "performed exceptionally well," and was due to start a new, highly compensated job in the medical and AI field the following Monday.

"Anyone who's interacted with Matt in the last two weeks will tell you that things were looking up for him," Braithwaite said, per Newsweek. He described Lambert as a healer who had funded scholarships for medical students, calling him "a great thinker and author," someone "very calm and collected," and said he had never known Lambert to own a gun or heard him speak of having one.

Braithwaite also noted that Thursday was the anniversary of Lambert's mother's death. "I don't know how all of those things coalesce," he said, according to the New York Post. "But unfortunately, this is a choice that I hope that my clients would never make." He added, through Newsweek, that "these matters should have been resolved in court."

A mother who can't speak, and a city left asking why

Hamerski's family has not been able to hear her voice since the shooting. Tina Wilcox, speaking for the family, told the Washington Post that the Minnesota mother is "past the life-threatening part of it." Unable to talk, Hamerski has been writing notes on a pad of paper. One message, she wrote for the world: "Gun control is public health."

D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto, who represents the area, called it "a really targeted murder, with somebody who was clearly troubled," adding, "This person, we believe, was a physician, was in his 50s, was living a life in the neighborhood. Many knew him. And so it's, I think, an important reminder to all of us to look out for warning signs." She also said, "It's just so sad and so senseless to kill someone over a dispute that should be worked out reasonably."

Mayor Muriel Bowser said she was "devastated" by the "senseless act of gun violence," according to Newsweek. Outlets differ slightly on the toll: the New York Post, Around Prague and Newsweek all report one person killed and four wounded, while NBC News reported a fifth person was also struck by gunfire. The exact count of wounded has not been settled across every outlet's reporting.

What happens next

The civil lawsuit Lambert filed against the Metropole Condominium Association and EJF Real Estate Services had a mediation session scheduled for next March, though his death is likely to change how — or whether — that case moves forward. Because Lambert died at the scene, there is no criminal case or defendant; police in Washington, along with the ATF and the FBI's Washington Field Office, say the investigation into the shooting and the full extent of the underlying dispute is continuing.