A man on the F.B.I.’s Ten Most Wanted list was shot and killed by an agent during a predawn raid at a hotel in North Carolina on Wednesday, ending an 18-month search that spanned four states on opposite ends of the country.

The suspect, Greg A. Carlson, 47, was wanted in connection with an armed burglary and attempted sexual assault in Los Angeles in July 2017. The agency said in an announcement publicizing his placement on the most wanted list last year that “he should be considered armed and extremely dangerous.”

John A. Strong, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I. field office in Charlotte, N.C., said Mr. Carlson was found after a local police officer spotted a suspicious vehicle early Wednesday in the parking lot of the WoodSpring Suites in Apex, N.C., a few miles west of Raleigh.

The officer ran the car’s license plates and determined it to be the car associated with Mr. Carlson and listed on his F.B.I. wanted poster. The officer alerted the F.B.I., which sent an agent to the hotel and determined that Mr. Carlson was in a room there.

“Our officers approached the room to effect an arrest of Mr. Carlson and upon making contact with Mr. Carlson and attempting to effect the arrest, Mr. Carlson — who was armed at the time — was in fact shot by an F.B.I. agent and is now deceased,” Mr. Strong said at a news conference outside the hotel. He said that only one shot had been fired.

“The shooting happened where the subject was staying, in his room, but I don’t want to go into further than that, about how he was approached,” Mr. Strong added. But he told reporters that law enforcement officers had not intended to kill Mr. Carlson.

“We want to capture the individual, give them their day in court and bring them to justice,” he said. “What happened today was unfortunate. It is definitely not what we want to happen. We feel fortunate that no one else was injured, but by no means did we want this to happen to this individual.”

Mr. Carlson was accused of trying to rob a home in Los Angeles on July 13, 2017, and while he was there trying to sexually assault a woman while he was carrying a weapon, the F.B.I. said when it announced his placement on the most wanted list last year. It did not say what type of weapon he had used.

He was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department in September 2017 and charged with burglary, assault with intent to commit rape and assault with a deadly weapon. He posted bail and was released, then fled.

The bureau said that Mr. Carlson then went to Mount Pleasant, S.C., but eventually left that state with a stolen handgun, a rental car and “a significant amount of cash.” It said it did not know how he had obtained the money.

In November 2017, he led the police in Hanover, Ala., on what the F.B.I. called “an erratic, high-speed pursuit” that ended when officers decided the car chase was a danger to the public and stopped following him. Later that month, he was seen in Florida in Jacksonville and Daytona Beach, the bureau said.

On Wednesday, the F.B.I. said that the suspect’s fingerprints matched those of Mr. Carlson but that the medical examiner’s office would formally identify the body.

A representative for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said such an announcement would happen after the completion of an autopsy, which could take several days.

The F.B.I. said a team from its inspection division would review the shooting at the hotel and present its findings to a Shooting Incident Review Group consisting of representatives from the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.

“While this internal review process is occurring,” the bureau said, “no further comments can be made.”

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