WASHINGTON: A disgruntled tenant shot dead his building manager and wounded four other people in an upscale Washington neighbourhood on Thursday before killing himself, police said.

The shooting, which occurred about a mile north of the White House, sparked a massive police response in the US capital, with dozens of law enforcement vehicles racing to the scene and police helicopters hovering overhead.

Jeffery Carroll, Washington's interim police chief, told reporters that the gunman, identified as Matt Lambert, 55, had been involved in an ongoing dispute over maintenance with the condominium association for the building where he owned an apartment.

Lambert, an emergency medicine physician, fatally shot the building manager in a gym attached to the complex, located in the Logan Circle neighbourhood, and then barricaded himself in his seventh-floor unit, Carroll said.