A gunman shot five people, killing one, on a busy thoroughfare in central Washington, DC, Thursday morning, police said.
Mass shootings are not uncommon in the United States, but in this case local police and federal security forces responded quickly and extensively. Law and order in the nation’s capital is at the center of a national debate about US President Donald Trump’s administration.
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What happened in the gunfight?
At around 8 a.m. local time (13:00 GMT), during busy rush hour, a gunman entered the gym in Logan Circle, a trendy neighborhood about 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) north of the White House near foreign embassies and fashionable restaurants.
“Within seconds, a man was on the ground, a pool of blood pouring out,” said James Spellman, who witnessed the assault and said there were about 50 people in the gym. “One of the gym members rushed to his aid. He died instantly. He had been shot in the neck.”
Spellman said he and other gym members ran out of the gym and heard more gunshots near 15th Street. He said he heard two shots fired inside the gym and about five or six shots outside.
Law enforcement arrived within minutes, cordoned off the area, and attempted to apprehend the suspect. Participants included members of the city’s law enforcement agency, the Metropolitan Police Department, as well as heavily armed officers from federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Secret Service.
Authorities issued an alert warning people in the area to shelter in place due to an “active shooter” situation. Schools near the scene were placed on lockdown. Police told the public to “enter the nearest building, stay away from windows and remain indoors until further notice.”
D.C. Interim Police Chief Jeffrey Carroll said the suspect is a white male wearing a gray shirt.
Police said the suspect fired shots inside the gym, then exited the building, entered another building next door and barricaded himself in a room on the seventh floor. Officers then began negotiations with the suspect, with a professional negotiator speaking to him over the phone while a sniper watched from a nearby rooftop. At one point, he fired at police through a barricaded door.
According to police, about an hour after they started talking, they heard gunshots over the phone and decided to break into the room where the suspect had barricaded themselves. Police found him suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
What do we know about the suspect and victim?
D.C. City Councilwoman Brooke Pinto said the suspect, described as a doctor named Matt Lambert, shot and killed a man in a gym who was initially suing him over a dispute over an apartment complex where he lived.
Police Chief Carroll told reporters shortly after the suspect’s body was discovered that the shooting appeared to stem from “a dispute between the suspect and the building’s homeowners association.”
Some unconfirmed reports suggest that the social media accounts may belong to the suspect, and appear to have frequently posted about poor living conditions in apartment buildings in the area where the attacks occurred.
Little information has been released about the victims of the shooting. Officials said one person died and another was in critical condition at the hospital.
What are the larger political implications of this mass shooting?
President Trump sparked controversy by deploying troops nationwide to several Democratic-controlled cities, citing the August 2025 attack in the same Logan Circle area as the reason for deploying troops to the nation’s capital.
A former Ministry of Government Efficiency official said he was assaulted by a group of teenagers who tried to carjack him and a woman who was with him in the same area in the early hours of the morning. President Trump has declared a criminal emergency and said his administration is taking control of local police departments in the federal district.
Although Washington, DC has a mayor and a city council, it is not treated on the same level as other states in the country, and Congress, as well as the president, have certain authority over matters such as budgets and law enforcement activities.
President Trump has sent thousands of National Guard troops to the nation’s capital, and more than a year later they continue to patrol the city en masse, including the Logan Circle area.
Troops are stationed inside subway stations and throughout downtown, but local officials say they are mostly far from the city’s high-crime areas and their impact is not as great as Trump claims.
The military itself has also launched attacks.
Last November, a National Guardsman was killed by a gunman while on duty near NW 17th and Eye Streets. A second National Guard member was injured. And in October, another National Guard member was killed in a shootout in southeast Washington, D.C.
The presence of soldiers has sometimes caused friction with local officials, including Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Bowser, who held a press conference with police chiefs after Thursday’s shooting, praised local police for their quick response to the incident and dismissed suggestions that law enforcement was giving the case unusual importance.
“I commend (the D.C. Police Department) and the prosecutor’s office for reducing crime in this city,” Bowser said. “All law enforcement agencies responded because it’s not common for a gunman to shoot and kill people in the city.”
