A doctor who had been in an ongoing dispute over mould and other issues at his Washington DC apartment fatally shot his building’s manager and fired at four others before killing himself, police say.
Building manager James Stuart, 46, was pronounced dead at the scene, while four others were rushed to local hospitals for treatment.
The shooting began on Thursday morning local time inside a gym in an apartment building in the Logan Circle neighbourhood, which is about a mile (1.6km) north of the White House.
Police said the suspect, identified as 55-year-old doctor Matt Wade Lambert, then barricaded himself in an apartment, and later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
While the suspect was barricaded, “he did fire through the door at officers at least on two occasions”, Jefferey Carroll, the interim chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, said at a news conference.
Negotiators had been on the phone with the suspect when they heard a gunshot and he stopped communicating with them, according to Carroll.
Officers forced their way into the apartment and saw the suspect had what appeared to be a “self-inflicted gunshot wound”, he said.
Authorities are still working to understand the exact timeline, suspect’s motivation, and other details of the incident.
“We do know that there has been an ongoing dispute between the suspect in this case and the building, condo, homeowners association management regarding maintenance issues, mould and the like,” Carroll said.
“That there was a civil case that he filed against them. So we believe that it’s related to that.”
Police believe that after the suspect opened fire inside the gym, he fled the scene and then shot at the four other victims, who were on the ground level, from his patio balcony area on the building’s seventh floor.
One of the injured is in a critical condition, police said.
It was not immediately clear whether he had a relationship with the other victims.
Authorities recovered three firearms from the suspect’s apartment, all of which he used in Thursday’s incident.
“It does appear there was some level of planning associated with this,” Carroll said.
It was unclear how he obtained the weapons, as he did not have any firearms registered to him in Washington DC, police said.