hree people were killed early yesterday in separate encounters in New York City, the police said.

In the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, three men were shot, one of them fatally, as they sat on a bench around 1:30 a.m. in the courtyard of a city housing project playing dice, the police said.

Two men approached and shot at the three men, hitting Travis Walton, 24, once in the head and killing him.

Daryl Smith, 33, who is known in the neighborhood as Lukey, was shot once in the chest. He was taken to St. Mary's Hospital, where he was in critical but stable condition yesterday afternoon. Timothy Arnold, 38, was shot in the arm and taken to Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, where he was in stable condition.

Residents at the housing project, the Ocean Hill Houses, said they were saddened, but not surprised. "It's hard to be shocked about it because it's happened so often," said Shannon Wynn, 23, who lives at the project and said she had attended high school with Mr. Walton.

Mr. Arnold's wife, Coretta Arnold, said her husband told her after the shooting that he had stopped at the courtyard on his way home to break up a fight. "He saw something that didn't look right and tried to help," Mrs. Arnold said.

In the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn, the body of a 41-year-old woman was found in her bed in a single-room-occupancy hotel after someone called around 2:30 a.m. to report an assault, a police official said. The victim's husband, a 34-year-old man, was later arrested. An autopsy is to be performed today.

The woman, whose name was not released, filed a complaint for assault in the past, but her husband was never arrested in connection with the complaint, a police official said. The man and woman have both been arrested numerous times, the official said.

In the University Heights section of the Bronx, Robert Burke, 33, of Jersey City, was shot numerous times at 12:10 a.m. as he sat in a car on Sedgwick Avenue. No arrests had been made as of yesterday afternoon. Mr. Burke had an extensive record, a police official said.