First reports of a man firing shots came at motel just outside the city centre about 5.50pm

Witnesses of a shooting in Darwin that left four people dead and a woman injured have described scenes of panic after the gunman went on an hour-long rampage.

Northern Territory police arrested the suspected shooter, described as a Caucasian man aged 45, wearing high-vis workwear, on Tuesday night. He remained in hospital under police guard on Wednesday.

Police said the suspected shooter was “well known to police” and may have had links to motorcycle gangs. He had been released on parole in January and was wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet.

Witnesses have described scenes of panic and carnage throughout the city as the gunman moved from scene to scene.

Darwin shooting: four people dead as police reveal suspect was on parole Read more

The first reports of a man firing shots came at the Palms Motel just outside the Darwin city centre about 5.50pm. A man was killed at the motel before three other deaths occurred at the nearby Buff Club, Gardens Hill Crescent and an industrial site at Jolly Street in the suburb of Woolner.

Jasmine Kielly and her partner, Brendon Ozanne, told the ABC they were staying at the Palms Motel after moving to Darwin only a week ago.

“I heard some loud banging – silly me went out the front to check,” Kielly told the ABC. “As I’ve gone down towards the stairs, I saw a man in a high-vis shirt walk out with a rifle.

“He’s turned to look at me and I’ve run to the bedroom and locked the door and we hid in the bathroom and we called the police and just heard shot after shot after shot.”

Another witness, John Rose, told the ABC he had seen a man walk into the motel with a “sawn-off shotgun”.

“He shot up all the rooms and he went to every room looking for somebody and he shot them all up. Then we saw him rush out, jump into his Toyota pick-up, and rush off.”

I asked him what he was doing but he went right past me and shot my mate. His body is still in there Johnny Reid

While police have not yet detailed the gunman’s exact movements, the shooting continued at the Gardens, an inner-city suburb in Darwin, where another man was killed and a woman was injured.

A witness told the NT News she had been on the phone to the police when she saw the alleged gunman flee the scene.

“I was on the phone with the police and I said, ‘He’s gone right towards the Gardens,’ and I just said that and the cops come and chased him that way,” she said.

Another Darwin resident, Matthew James, told Nine’s Today program he had been standing in the car park of a motel when “all of a sudden there were these gunshots”.

“Moments later someone came running towards me carrying this woman who was covered in blood and just basically put her at my feet and she was screaming that she had been shot,” he said.

“The guy that actually carried her up was pretty frantic at the time, saying he had opened the door and there was a gunman there with a shotgun and he proceeded to fire upon anybody inside the building.

“She was caught up in it, she said, ‘I’ve been shot, I don’t know why, I don’t have anything to do with anything,’” he said.

Witnesses described a fight breaking out at the Buffalo Club car park, where a man was believed to have died after a fight involving a knife and gun. The pub reportedly stayed open after the shooting.

Another crime scene was established at an industrial site on Jolly Street in the suburb of Woolner.

Johnny Reid was watching television at his worksite at about 6pm when the door of the unit he was sitting in was was knocked down by a man holding a shotgun, the NT News reports.

“He busted in and looked right at me,” he told the NT News. “I looked at him and thought, ‘Fuck, this is it.’ I thought I was dead for sure.

“I asked him what he was doing but he went right past me and shot my mate. His body is still in there.”

The man was arrested after calling NT police and trying to enter police headquarters in what the police commissioner, Reece Kershaw, said on Tuesday may have been an attempt to hand himself in.

Kershaw would not speculate on the man’s motive on Tuesday but said it had not been a terrorist attack and that the shooter had “acted individually”.

“He is an individual who is well known to police and has a number of interactions adverse with the police force, so he is well known to us,” he said.

“I did speak this evening with the corrections commissioner; my information is around January of this year he was released on parole.”