马特·兰伯特是一名前急诊室医生和医疗保健科技高管，周四在华盛顿特区开枪射击五人，随后开枪自杀，据称动机是他与都会公寓协会及该大楼物业经理之间一场持续不断、充满怨恨且令他身心交瘁的法律纠纷。
Matt Lambert, a former emergency room physician and health care technology executive, shot five people and then himself on Thursday in D.C., apparently motivated by a bitter, ongoing and all-consuming legal dispute with the Metropole Condominium Association and the building’s property manager.
这场来回纠纷已持续一年多，耗尽了他的退休储蓄，并加剧了他的绝望。
The back-and-forth had been dragging on for more than a year, draining his retirement savings and fueling a deepening desperation.
将近一年前，我曾就此事与他交谈。兰伯特于2025年底联系了我，当时我是《华盛顿邮报》的一名记者，他向我推销一个关于他位于洛根圆的价值百万美元的顶层公寓因无法居住而受损的故事。我继续跟进报道，直到新年，但这篇文章在2026年初我被《华盛顿邮报》裁员后搁置。
Just under a year ago, I spoke to him about it. Lambert reached out to me in late 2025 when I was a reporter at The Washington Post, pitching a story about how his million-dollar Logan Circle penthouse had been rendered unlivable. I continued reporting the story into the new year, but the article was abandoned when I was laid off from the Post in early 2026.
2025年11月下旬至12月的一系列采访中——包括两次进入位于西北第十五街都会大楼内他那已被拆得一干二净的顶层公寓——兰伯特描述了，关于严重漏水和黑色霉菌的纠纷，如何演变成他本人、大楼经理詹姆斯·斯图尔特、管理公司EJF房地产服务公司及其保险辩护律师之间的“心理战”。
In a series of interviews in late November and December 2025 — including two visits inside his gutted penthouse at the Metropole on 15th Street Northwest — Lambert described how a dispute over severe water leaks and black mold had turned into “psychological warfare” between himself, building manager James Stuart, the management company EJF Real Estate Services and their insurance defense attorneys.
“这影响了我生活的方方面面——我的睡眠、饮食习惯，”兰伯特12月告诉我。“我一直以自己的韧性为傲，对自己受到的影响之大感到有些惊讶。”据华盛顿特区警方称，周四，兰伯特在大楼一楼的VIDA健身中心，于上午8点前在一次有针对性的袭击中开枪射杀了斯图尔特，随后在附近又射击了四人，并在自己的公寓内设置路障，随后开枪自杀。在另外四名被射击的人中，一人情况危急，另外三人伤势不危及生命。
“It’s affected every part of my life — my sleep, dietary habits,” Lambert told me in December. “I pride myself on my resilience, and I’ve been kind of surprised at how much it has been affected.”On Thursday, D.C. police said, Lambert shot and killed Stuart at the VIDA Fitness Center located on the ground floor of the building in a targeted attack just before 8 a.m., then shot four more people in the vicinity and barricaded himself in his apartment before shooting and killing himself. Of the other four people who were shot, one was in critical condition, while three others had non-life-threatening injuries.
在整个报道过程中，兰伯特从未透露过会诉诸暴力，但他确实经常使用激烈、好斗的语言——有一次，他的沮丧情绪甚至让当时的人觉得像是黑色幽默。去年12月拜访一位邻居时，兰伯特随口提到路易吉·曼吉奥内，批评公寓业主协会的法律策略。曼吉奥内是2024年枪杀联合健康保险公司首席执行官的嫌疑人，被指控在弹药上刻有“延迟、拒绝、质询”字样。
While at no point in the reporting process did Lambert give any indication he would resort to violence, he did frequently use intense, combative language — and at one point, his frustration veered into what at the time felt like dark humor. During a December visit with a neighbor, Lambert criticized the condo association’s legal strategy by making an offhand reference to Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the 2024 shooting death of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO who is accused of inscribing “delay, deny, depose” on his ammunition. “What are they called? Delay, deny, defend … the Luigi three?”
“它们叫什么来着？延迟、拒绝、辩护……路易吉三人组？”兰伯特说。
Lambert said.
兰伯特于2016年购买了这套价值110万美元的顶层公寓，最近将其挂牌出售，计划搬到纽约。但他说，这场冲突让他被困在华盛顿特区，冲突始于2023年4月至2024年8月进行的建筑外立面修复工程。他说，工程期间，暴雨后雨水开始沿着窗户内侧流下，浸湿了地板；2024年8月工人完成他所在角落的施工后，墙壁上出现了裂缝、油漆剥落和可见的霉菌。他说，2024年10月，他聘请独立检测人员向斯图尔特和承包商出示广泛潮湿和空气中霉菌的证据，会议随即草草结束。
Lambert, who bought the $1.1 million top-floor unit in 2016, had recently put the penthouse on the market with plans to relocate to New York. But he said the conflict trapped him in D.C., beginning after a building facade rehabilitation that ran from April 2023 to August 2024. While the project was underway, he said, water began running down the interior of his windows and wetting his floors after rainstorms — with cracks, peeling paint and visible mold spreading across his walls once crews finished work on his corner in August 2024. When he hired independent testers in October 2024 to show Stuart and contractors evidence of widespread moisture and airborne mold, Lambert said, the meeting ended abruptly.
据兰伯特称，当他的律师问斯图尔特是否能闻到霉味时，斯图尔特回答说公寓“闻起来像古龙水”，然后走出去，将此事交给了大楼的律师处理。
According to Lambert, when his attorney asked Stuart whether he could smell the mold, Stuart replied that the apartment “smelled like cologne,” walked out and turned the matter over to the building’s lawyers.
由于我对这场争议的报道当时尚未完成，我从未能将兰伯特的指控呈交给斯图尔特或EJF房地产服务公司，以获取他们的立场。华盛顿太阳报周四早些时候未能联系到该物业管理公司。
Because my reporting on the dispute was not completed at the time, I was never able to present Lambert’s allegations to Stuart or EJF Real Estate Services to get their perspective. The Washington Sun was unable to reach the management firm earlier Thursday.
兰伯特说，2024年11月，他自掏腰包支付了1.2万美元，把公寓拆到只剩金属龙骨和底层地板，结果发现黑色霉菌从地板一直长到天花板。他说，当大楼的工程师把潮湿归咎于兰伯特自己的电器时，他有六个月没有使用淋浴、暖气和烘干机——而是到楼下的VIDA Fitness健身房洗澡，只靠壁炉给公寓供暖——试图证明他们的说法是错的。
In November 2024, Lambert said, he paid $12,000 out of his own pocket to strip his apartment down to the metal studs and subflooring, uncovering floor-to-ceiling black mold. When the building’s engineers blamed the moisture on Lambert’s own appliances, he said he went six months without using his shower, heat or dryer — instead showering downstairs at VIDA Fitness, and heating his unit solely with his fireplace — to try to prove them wrong.
2025年3月，兰伯特在哥伦比亚特区高等法院起诉Metropole公寓业主协会，指控该协会疏忽、违反受托责任并构成妨害，理由是他所称的拙劣翻修和被驳回的维修请求。法庭记录显示，该协会否认负有责任，但去年未能让案件被驳回。兰伯特说，暴雨过后漏水依然存在时，大楼的辩护律师转而把问题归咎于VIDA Fitness工业烘干机排风口产生的湿气，这些排风口从他公寓后面经过，并申请将这家健身房追加为被告，使案件又拖延了90天。
In March 2025, Lambert sued the Metropole Condominium Association in D.C. Superior Court, accusing the association of negligence, breach of fiduciary duty and nuisance over what he alleged were botched renovations and rebuffed repair requests. The association denied responsibility but lost a bid to have the case thrown out last year, court records show.
兰伯特说，到2025年12月，当时54岁的他已在法律和工程费用上花费近20万美元——他抵押退休储蓄来支付诉讼费用——而在他被拆空的公寓里，只住着一张沙发和一张书桌。
When leaks persisted after rainstorms, Lambert said, the building’s defense counsel pivoted to blaming humidity from VIDA Fitness’s industrial dryer vents, which ran behind his unit, and moved to pull the gym into the lawsuit, delaying the case by another 90 days.
兰伯特当时在一次采访中说，他正准备让律师调取他与斯图尔特之间的所有电子邮件，用于法庭证据开示，并指控斯图尔特对住户给出前后矛盾的回答，还捏造维修记录。
By December 2025, Lambert, who was 54 at the time, said he had spent nearly $200,000 on legal and engineering fees — borrowing against his retirement savings to fund the litigation — while living with only a couch and a desk inside his stripped-down apartment.
去年，在都会大厦内，兰伯特说，这场僵局让他“备受排斥”。他将平时用于工作的白板改作用途，制作了一张时间表，记录大厦管理方的种种冷遇。感到斯图尔特和公寓理事会对他置之不理，他注册了一个名为“老鼠与霉菌”的匿名社交媒体网络喷子账号，针对斯图尔特和EJF，原因是大厦维修工程迟迟未完成。他在洛根圆环周围的路灯和垃圾桶上张贴传单，并在自己被拆得一干二净的单元内举办开放日，向邻居展示他的工程报告。他将大厦中的闲言碎语和派系斗争比作被困在琐碎的戏剧之中。
Lambert said in an interview at the time that he was preparing to have his attorney pull every email exchanged between him and Stuart for court discovery, accusing Stuart of giving conflicting answers to residents and fabricating maintenance history. Inside the Metropole last year, Lambert said the standoff had made him “radioactive.”He repurposed a whiteboard he normally used for work into a timeline tracking the building management’s slights. Feeling stonewalled by Stuart and the condo board, he launched an anonymous social media troll account called “Of Mice and Mold” to target Stuart and EJF over unfinished building repairs. He placed flyers on streetlights and trash cans around Logan Circle and hosted open houses in his gutted unit to show neighbors his engineering reports.
“高中生活从未结束。迈克尔，我们被困在高中里，”兰伯特告诉我。“如果不是涉及重大投资风险，而且我花掉了毕生积蓄——本想用于退休，现在却在花，而且看不到尽头——这倒还挺幽默的。我在建筑内的信息越来越激进，不仅在大厦内，还有那个推特页面也是如此。”周四早上，该X账号发布的一条帖子写道：“我的宣言是一份工程报告”，并附上了文件截图，描述外墙和阳台的问题如何导致兰伯特单元内出现大面积渗漏。
He compared the building’s gossip and factions to being trapped in petty drama. “High school never ends. Michael, we are stuck in high school,” Lambert told me. “And it would be humorous if it wasn’t significant investment at risk, and really spending a lot of money that I’ve saved my entire life that I wanted to spend for retirement — I’m spending it right now with no end in sight. I’ve become increasingly aggressive in my messaging, not only in the building, but also with that Twitter page.”
十二月，站在他被拆得一片狼藉的客厅里，兰伯特指着单元里放着的一本孙子兵书《孙子兵法》说。
A Thursday morning post on the X account said, “My manifesto is an engineering report,” and contained screenshots of documents describing how problems with the facade and balcony had caused extensive leaks in Lambert’s unit.
“我每天都在经历各种情绪。……我是继续战斗，还是不战斗？《孙子兵法》讲的是，你知道，战斗还没开始，胜负就已决定。它说，如果你要承诺，就不要半心半意，要全力以赴。”兰伯特说，他愿意战斗的部分原因是，他是一个没有孩子的单身男性。
Standing in his deconstructed living room in December, Lambert pointed to a copy of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” sitting in his unit. “I go through every emotion every day on this. … Do I keep fighting? Do I not fight? And ‘The Art of War’ talks about, you know, the battle’s won before it’s ever fought. It says if you’re going to commit, don’t half commit, fully commit.”
“他们想让我退出。他们想让我破产，”兰伯特谈到这场法律纠纷时说。“如果我走出来，得不到一个令人满意的结果，我手头不会有多少钱，但我能接受，这比屈服要好。……他们没有我的许可这样对我待。”兰伯特在阿巴拉契亚长大，由一位单亲母亲抚养，母亲在他就读马歇尔大学医学院第一年死于癌症。兰伯特当了20年急诊医生，之后转行从事医疗信息技术。
Lambert said part of the reason he was willing to fight was that he was a single man with no children. “They’re trying to make me quit. They’re trying to make me go broke,” Lambert said of the legal fight. “If I come out of this and I don’t get a satisfactory outcome, I won’t have a bunch of money, but I can live with that better than rolling over. … They don’t have my permission to treat me this way.”Raised in Appalachia by a single mother who died of cancer during his first year of medical school at Marshall University, Lambert worked as an ER doctor for 20 years before pivoting to health care IT.
他大约在2010年搬到华盛顿特区，后来担任西雅图和纽约市几家大型医院系统的首席医疗信息官，并远程为一家总部位于洛杉矶的健康数据公司担任首席医疗官。
He moved to D.C. around 2010, later serving as chief medical information officer for major hospital systems in Seattle and New York City and working remotely as a chief medical officer for a Los Angeles-based health data company.
在一次12月份对兰伯特那间被拆得只剩骨架的单元的探访中，另一位同样等了数月等待漏水维修的住户抱怨说，当他打电话给物业管理公司时，“你永远收不到詹姆斯的回电。”兰伯特立刻插嘴说，他知道斯图尔特在楼下VIDA健身房的日常作息。
During one December visit inside Lambert’s gutted unit, a fellow resident who had also been waiting months for leak repairs complained that when he called the management company, “you never get a call back from James.”Lambert immediately chimed in that he knew Stuart’s daily routine at the VIDA Fitness downstairs.
“如果你想见大楼经理，”兰伯特说，“他大约8点会来健身房。”
“If you want to see the building manager,” Lambert said, “he comes in the gym about 8 o’clock.”