Wendlingen, Germany - Sema Yanik immediately grasped what was going on when she saw police swarming around the petrol station where she is employed as a cashier.

"I knew it was connected with the school shooting spree," she said, nodding in the direction of the Volkswagen car showroom where the gunman died in a shootout at midday on Wednesday.

Tim K had driven 40 kilometres from the school in the south- western town of Winnenden where he shot dead nine students and three teachers, all but one of them female. He also killed a passerby while making his getaway.

In Wendlingen he continued his killing spree, opening fire and fatally wounding two car salesmen after demanding they give him a car.

The 17-year-old, had previously hijacked a car near the school and forced its owner to take him to Wendlingen where he let him go and headed for an industrial estate.

The motorist alerted police, who quickly arrived on the scene and exchanged fire with the gunman outside the car showroom. The youth injured two policemen, before apparently shooting himself in the head after being hit by a police bullet.

"We don't know why he chose to come here. As far as we know he had no connection with this place," said police spokesman Hans-Dieter Wagner at the scene.

"I heard a shot being fired," said 15-year-old Isuf Tahiri, who lives in the neighbourhood and is watching events with friends from behind a police cordon.

An elderly man asks a policeman if he knows what happened to his nephew, who works at the car showroom.

Isuf's brother Tarzan said he saw the gunman running across a supermarket parking lot towards the showroom when "police told me to clear off."

Sema Yanik said she was not scared by the events that took place in her immediate vicinity.

"But it's strange. When I first heard the news of the shooting at the school this morning, it sounded so far away."