Removing the mongodb.lock file was not the issue in my case. I did so and got an error about the port being in use: [initandlisten] listen(): bind() failed errno:98 Address already in use for socket: 0.0.0.0:27017. I found another solution here: unable to start mongodb local server with instructions to kill the process:
Find out from netstat which process is running mongodb port (27017)
sudo netstat -tulpn | grep :27017
Output will be: tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:27017 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 1412/mongod
Kill the appropriate process.
sudo kill 1412
(replace 1412 with your process ID found in step 1)
And I was able to successfully start mongodb again. I believe mine was still running from an improper shut down.