PROVIDENCE — Although a complement of police was on private duty outside, someone managed to get a handgun inside Club Pulse early Christmas morning. That person shot to death one man and wounded two others.

The police yesterday identified the victim of the slaying in the South Providence nightclub as Kendall Marshall, 29, of Providence, and the other two victims as Darius Armardor, 26, of Groton, Conn., and James Rue, 31, of the Mattapan section of Boston.

A bullet hit Armardor in the neck, and he was treated at Rhode Island Hospital, according to the police. Rue was shot in the lower back and admitted to the same hospital, where at last word he was in stable condition.

Marshall was shot near a pool table and the dance floor, Capt. Hugh T. Clements Jr., detective commander, said yesterday, and he was pronounced dead at Rhode Island Hospital. In the confusion that followed the gunfire, which erupted at about 1:30 a.m., the shooter managed to escape the premises with the gun, Clements said. No suspect has been identified.

Clements would not say how many shots were fired, how many bullets struck each of the victims, and where in his body Marshall was struck. He also refused to identify the assailant’s gender.

Due to the shooting and previous violence inside and outside Club Pulse, the police intend to ask the city Board of Licenses to suspend or revoke the nightclub’s license to serve liquor as well as its other licenses. The club, which does not open for business every night, was closed as scheduled last night and is not scheduled to reopen until Friday, according to the police.

“We’re still looking into what precipitated the violence,” Clements said. “There was a large crowd in the club that night. There was a lot of mayhem and confusion when the shots rang out.”

“There are several people that we are looking to interview, and the investigation is continuing.”

By order of the Board of Licenses, club ownership is supposed to have police officers working during some of the hours that the club is open. As recently as October 2005, Pulse was required to have six officers and a police car available on Sunday nights before holidays, although the police said that number may have been reduced since then. Pulse features hip-hop music on Sundays.

The number of officers present Christmas morning could not be determined.

When police officers work an off-duty detail, they are in the indirect employ of the bar or club that has hired them and they are paid through the Police Department. Under department policy, they must stay outside and help to keep the peace unless a disturbance or other emergency requires them to go inside.

At some nightclubs, employees check patrons for weapons by passing a metal-detecting wand over their bodies, but at Pulse, according to Clements, employees do a light pat down of patrons and check their bags.

“There was a full-capacity crowd at the club,” and many of those inside ran for the exits when the shots were fired, making it difficult for the detail officers to react, according to Clements. “Somehow a weapon got into the club that morning,” he said.

Club Pulse, at 86 Crary St., is in a white-painted industrial building tucked away in a mixed-use neighborhood, between Rhode Island Hospital and a land-clearing operation for the relocation of Route 195. A rusting trailer is parked at the building’s loading dock and the parking lot is surrounded by a chain-link fence.

Most of the nearby buildings are used for institutional purposes, such as hospital functions and Steere House nursing and rehabilitation center, but there are a few houses nearby.

The club has a thick case file with the police and the license board. In the past four years A.A.T. Restaurant Corp., the liquor licensee, has been warned, fined a total of $2,250 and ordered to have a beefed-up police presence, for allowing underaged drinking, disturbances and other illegal activity. Pulse was temporarily closed in March 2005 due to noncompliance with the state fire code.

Police Maj. Paul Fitzgerald warned the license board at a public hearing in March 2005, after gunshots were fired outside Pulse, that if the board did not take stern action, there would be more shootings and disturbances. The board did not sanction Pulse at that time because, board members said, the link between the shooting and the club was too tenuous to blame on the club.