A truck driver went on a stabbing spree Tuesday morning at a highway truck stop in eastern Tennessee, killing three employees and wounding a customer before he was fatally shot by a law enforcement officer, the authorities said.

The attack happened just before 7 a.m. at a Pilot Travel Center off Interstate 40 in Knox County, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which did not immediately offer a motive for the stabbings.

The suspect, Idris Abdus-Salaam, 33, of Durham, N.C., was holding a knife and refused to drop it when law enforcement officers confronted him in the truck stop’s parking lot, the bureau said. One of the officers fired several shots at Mr. Abdus-Salaam, who died at the scene, according to the bureau. It did not say how many rounds hit Mr. Abdus-Salaam.

The three truck stop employees who were killed were Joyce Whaley, 57; Patricia Denise Nibbe, 51; and Nettie R. Spencer, 41, investigators said. All three women died at the scene. The condition of the fourth victim, who the authorities said was hospitalized and was a customer, was not released.