A Montreal police officer was killed in a shootout on Monday that left three dead, and, for almost three tense hours, city residents were urged to shelter in place.

The gunman was killed at the scene, according to the police, who urged residents to stay indoors because an armed suspect was believed to be still at large.

Nearby roads, transit stations and businesses closed. In the end, the police announced that the lockdown orders were only precautionary.

A civilian was also killed and a female officer was wounded, according to the Montreal police chief, Fady Dagher.

The officer was identified as Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, 34. He had been on the force since 2021, the police said.

“It’s a tragedy and a nightmare,” Chief Dagher said, noting that the shooting marked the first time in 24 years that a Montreal officer was killed in the line of duty. “He was very passionate,” Chief Dagher said of the deceased officer, Constable Benredouane, adding that he had a lot of credibility in the community.

Investigators had recovered a long gun at the scene.

Chief Dagher said that officers had arrived at the scene in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood, in northwest Montreal, after receiving reports that a firearm had been seen pointing from a hotel window. When officers arrived, he said, they were fired upon and a gunfight ensued.

At a news conference, Chief Dagher said it was not clear what the gunman’s motive was.

Mordy Aisenstark, a manager at a pizza restaurant near the site of the shooting, said he heard “cracks from the gunshots” at around 11:30 a.m. on Monday.

Mr. Aisenstark gathered his employees and fled to the back of his store. Later, he saw what appeared to be the shooter, clad in camouflage, lying dead on the ground next to a firearm. After law enforcement arrived, the employees of the pizza shop were led to a bathroom in another part of the building and told to shelter in place.

Rosita Lucas, who lives in a two-story house near the shooting, said she heard a series of gunshots from her basement. Coming outside, she saw police officers swarming the area.

“‘Get inside, get inside,’ they were yelling at us,” Ms. Lucas recalled. “But then they evacuated the hotel over there, and they were ordering people to get out so quickly that a man who had only one leg didn’t have the time to put it on.”

Nyl Sarmiento, a Filipino immigrant whose family has lived in the area for two decades, said, “Nothing like this has ever happened in this neighborhood before. Crime rates are low here.”

The shooting occurred in an area with new apartment and commercial buildings along a main highway that cuts through Montreal. But the larger area is dotted with modest, two-story attached houses that were long occupied by the local Lubavitcher Hasidic Jewish population, though many Filipino immigrant families have moved into the area in recent years.

“I hope they weren’t targeting Jewish people,” said Zalman Erdvin, who was praying at a local synagogue during the shooting. “They told us we were in lockdown and we had to stay inside for three hours.”

But Mr. Aisenstark, the pizzeria manager who is Jewish, said he did not believe that the shooter was motivated by antisemitism.

“There are two openly Jewish businesses in the area and they didn’t come to target them,” said Mr. Aisenstark, referring to his restaurant and a nearby deli.

In a statement, Rabbi Saul Emanuel, executive director of the Jewish Community Council of Montreal, urged community members to not “leap to conclusions before the facts are known.”

Zane Irwin contributed reporting from New York.