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Four people, including a District of Columbia police sergeant and two F.B.I. agents, were killed today in a wild eruption of gunfire inside the Police Headquarters building, the authorities said. Two other people were reported to have been wounded.

The police said the incident began around 3:30 P.M. and lasted about an hour. But by tonight many details of what had happened remained unknown.

Federal authorities said that one of the four dead was a gunman armed with a semiautomatic weapon. He was one of three men who had entered a third-floor room in which the police officer and the Federal agents were working, officials said.

Speaking tonight at a news conference at the offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the authorities did not provide a precise chronology; rather, they suggested that the victims were killed before an hour-long standoff with members of a SWAT team who had tried to negotiate with someone inside the room.

The authorities said that the SWAT members did not fire any weapons and that all the law-enforcement officers in the room were armed, suggesting that the gunman was killed by the law-enforcement agents in the room.

The officials said that one of the two men who had accompanied the gunman into the room was wounded and that the other was unharmed and was being questioned.

While officials did not identify the gunman or his companions, The Washington Post identified the gunman as Benny Lee Lawson, who, the newspaper said, had been interviewed by homicide investigators last week in connection with a triple slaying.

Asked what might have motivated the shootings, Anthony Daniels, the assistant director of the F.B.I. Washington field office, said, "I have no idea."

Chief of Police Fred Thomas said the gunfire had occurred in the office used by the department's homicide "cold case" squad, which investigates crimes in which leads have withered. F.B.I. agents are assigned to work with the squad.

The police station, which also houses the District's Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Finance and Revenue, is at Indiana Avenue and Third Street N.W., about a half-mile east of the White House and several blocks from the Capitol.

Chief Thomas said that officers inside the headquarters had managed to pull two victims -- the police sergeant who was killed and a wounded F.B.I. agent -- out of the room in which the gunfire occurred. Another man, whom the police identified only as a civilian, managed to crawl from the room with a bullet wound in his leg, officials said.

When officers finally broke into the room a police statement said, they found the one man who was unharmed, the two dead F.B.I. agents and another dead man, believed to have been the gunman.

Within minutes of the initial gunfire, police officers sealed off the area around the building, and the special weapons and tactics unit and a hostage negotiator were called in, Chief Thomas said.

Shortly after 4 P.M., the negotiator made contact with someone inside the office, officials said, and about a half-hour after that the SWAT team broke into the room.

Several local television stations reported that the incident involved a former police officer who had been dismissed, but neither Chief Thomas nor Mr. Daniels of the F.B.I. would confirm that.

The police sergeant who was killed was identified as Henry Joseph Daly, 51, a 28-year veteran of the District police force who had worked on homicide cases for 22 years. "He was a very methodical, calculating, committed police officer," said an officer who knew him. "How many cops after 20 years are still working homicide?"

Sergeant Daly was assigned to the cold case squad. "He had tremendous success in closing cases," said the officer who knew Sergeant Daly. "That unit has some of the better homicide detectives in the country."

The F.B.I. agents who were killed were identified as Martha Dixon Martinez, 35, and Michael John Miller, 36. A third F.B.I agent, John David Kuchta, was said to be in serious but stable condition at Washington Medical Center.

Chris Sanders, a five-year-veteran of the police force, criticized security precautions at the building. "Anybody can walk in here and take over the building. No problem," Officer Sanders said. "This is just ridiculous. The normal security around here is a guy sitting at the front door and someone at Motor Vehicles. They keep cutting the budget."

Budget cuts have become a major concern for the city in recent months, with Congress demanding spending cuts of $140 million for the 1995 fiscal year.

At a news conference that began several blocks away at about the time of the shootings, Mayor-elect Marion S. Barry Jr. outlined a plan to grapple with the city's dire financial situation.

In a proposal from a committee appointed by Mr. Barry to recommend cuts throughout the city budget, the authors suggested reducing the police force by 152 positions for a savings of $10.8 million.

By Michael Janofsky - The New York Times

November 24, 1994

The man who police say killed a District of Columbia police officer and two F.B.I. agents in a gun battle on Tuesday inside police headquarters here had a criminal record that included convictions on 13 weapons and ammunition charges, law-enforcement officials said today, and the 16-month probation he received after 18 months in jail had ended four days before the shootings.

The gunman, Bennie L. Lawson Jr., a 25-year-old former college student from the District, was also killed during the shooting. Two other people, including an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were wounded.

As police and Federal agents pieced together what happened, many questions remained unanswered, including whether Mr. Lawson killed himself. The police said he had never been in contact with the officers he shot.

Police officers and officials of their union said there were no security devices at police headquarters and precinct stations and urged Mayor-elect Marion S. Barry Jr. not to cut the Police Department budget any further as part of a citywide austerity program.

The police said the three officers killed were Sgt. Henry Joseph Daly, 51, a supervisor of the "cold case squad," a District police unit that investigates unsolved homicides, and two F.B.I. agents recently assigned to the squad, Martha A. Martinez, 35, and Michael John Miller, 36. Another F.B.I. agent, John David Kuchta, 31, remains in critical condition at Washington Hospital Center; a bullet entered his chest, hit his kidney and lodged in his stomach.

While the authorities have not released a detailed chronology, police officers and Federal agents said Mr. Lawson had been questioned earlier in the day on Tuesday in connection with a triple homicide last week.

One police lieutenant, who spoke in return for a promise of anonymity, said that after investigators failed to gain a confession, they released Mr. Lawson but kept his car to inspect for evidence. That angered him, the lieutenant said, and Mr. Lawson left headquarters apparently intent on returning with a gun.

But whether he had a specific target in mind upon his return, sometime after 3 P.M., is unknown.

A Federal law enforcement official said the killings occurred by "happenstance" when Mr. Lawson asked two civilians the location of the homicide office and they mistakenly directed him to Sergeant Daly's unit, which investigates older crimes.

Court records show that Mr. Lawson, who lived with his father, a products marketing manager, led a life often interrupted by arrest and punishment, starting in 1988, when he received one year's probation for a crime that the records did not identify.

In 1990 he and five other members of a gang known as the First and Kennedy Crew, named for streets in his neighborhood, were arrested after police raided a house where a gang member lived and found a cache of weapons, including loaded semiautomatic rifles and handguns. The authorities said that in his gun battle on Tuesday, Mr. Lawson used a semiautomatic handgun, either a Tech-9 or an M-11/9. Both are among the assault weapons banned by the recently enacted crime bill.

Mr. Lawson subsequently spent a year and a half at the Federal prison in Lorton, Va.

Eileen Sheehan, a Federal prosecutor who won convictions on 13 of 14 charges against Mr. Lawson, said the case was especially memorable.

"He was associated with a group of people who were extraordinarily dangerous," she said. "We process 14,000 misdemeanor cases a year and 100 to 150 at a time. Out of all those I was working on, this one caught my eye because of the firepower recovered."

While in jail Mr. Lawson wrote a letter to the judge who sentenced him, Ellen Segal Huvelle, of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, in which he complained about the living conditions in jail and asked the judge to reduce his sentence.

"Your honor, I only ask that if you can help me, that you please do so," he wrote. "My piety towards yourself and the courts would be at its greatest. I can say with surety that if I was given another chance, it would be to the best of society's and my interest."

But while on parole, Mr. Lawson was arrested again, in March of this year, and pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana.

None of those crimes, however, portended anything like what happened on Tuesday on the third floor of police headquarters, where Federal agents and local police officers work on unsolved murder cases.

When Mr. Lawson rode up the elevator in the police headquarters, a police lieutenant said, he encountered two men who had been witnesses in a prosecution by the "cold case squad." The two were planning meet a detective in the squad's office.

When Mr. Lawson asked where the homicide unit was, the official said, the men directed him to follow them.

"He stumbled into the wrong area," one official said.

He also said that Mr. Lawson might have taken his own life because he died of single shot to the forehead. But the official said the location of the wound, an unusual place for a self-inflicted wound, left open the question of whether he was shot by one of the officers.