Also among the dead was a police officer, who committed suicide outside his Brooklyn station house, the police said. The officer had just returned to the station house after making an arrest.
In all there were seven shootings on Thursday, the police said, a rare spike in gun violence in a city where crime rates continue to fall. The latest statistics suggest that the homicide rate, historically low in recent years, is again declining. There were 266 homicides recorded in 2013 as of Oct. 20, a 25 percent decline from the same period in 2012.
“You are going to have blips, but we are still moving in the right direction,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Friday, speaking about the latest shootings on a radio program with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
Even so, some corners of the city remain stubborn bastions of violence. Three homicides took place on Thursday within a cluster of contiguous police precincts in Brooklyn that include some of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods.
The first killing occurred in East New York about 7:30 p.m. There, police officers found Shawn Rhodes, 46, in a 2002 Chrysler Voyager that was parked close to his home on Wortman Avenue in the Linden Houses public housing project. He had been shot multiple times; he was pronounced dead at Brookdale Hospital.
An hour later and four miles away in East Flatbush, police officers discovered the body of Anthony Seaberry, 19. The police said Mr. Seaberry had been shot three times by a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and the ghoulish mask from the horror movie.
The third homicide victim, Kevin Thompson, 37, was shot and killed near Brownsville around 11:30 p.m.
No arrests were made in any of the three homicides.
The fatal shooting by the police occurred about 11 p.m. in the southeast Bronx. Officers responding to a call about shots in the Castle Hill Houses confronted a man matching the suspect’s description. A witness told investigators that the man, who was not immediately identified, opened fire on the officers and ran away, Mr. Kelly said at a news conference on Friday.
“During his flight, officers were firing shots,” Mr. Kelly said. Six police officers fired a total of 17 shots, he said.
It was not clear how many shots had hit the suspect, but he was declared dead at the scene. Officers found a .45-caliber automatic handgun by the suspect’s body, Mr. Kelly said, and four .45-caliber casings were found. The suspect was wearing a holster on his waistband, he added.
The police released only limited information on Friday about the officer’s suicide in Brooklyn. At the news conference, Mr. Kelly said the officer, identified only as a 13-year police veteran, had recently been assigned to the 66th Precinct, on 16th Avenue in Borough Park. He was on the investigative track, which typically leads to a promotion to detective after 18 months.
He and a lieutenant had made an arrest in a robbery earlier in the day and were processing the paperwork at the station house, Mr. Kelly said. About 4 p.m., the officer stepped out. He never returned.
After searching for the officer for more than an hour, his colleagues found him in his car.
“One detective looks into the vehicle and sees the officer in the car with blood on his shirt and determined that he committed suicide,” Mr. Kelly said.
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