Trains going through Espoo were stopped, Gaonkar said.
Pauli Poutanen, a reporter with CNN affiliate MTV3, reported employees of the grocery store where the attack happened were evacuated so quickly that they didn't have time to put on their winter weather gear. They were waiting outside in T-shirts in temperatures as low as -10 degrees Celsius, or 14 degrees Fahrenheit, he said.
Gaonkar said many of them were inside his restaurant to stay warm.
Other lone gunmen have carried out two recent high-profile shootings in Finland.
In September 2008, student Matti Juhani Saari, 22, killed 10 people before shooting himself in the head at Seinajoki University of Applied Sciences in Kauhajoki, Finland. Saari, who had been armed with a semi-automatic pistol and Molotov cocktails, posted YouTube videos of himself firing weapons before embarking on the massacre.
Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, killed seven fellow students and the principal at Jokela High School in Tuusula in November 2007 before shooting himself in the head.
Auvinen posted a YouTube video titled "Jokela High School Massacre" before the killing spree. In it he warned that he planned to "eliminate all who I see unfit." Brandishing a shotgun, the teenager was seen in the video wearing a T-shirt proclaiming "Humanity is Overrated."
Finland enjoys a strong tradition of hunting and has a high proportion of gun ownership, with 2 million firearms owned in a nation of 5 million people.
Ich wohne nur 2,5 km von diesem Einkaufszentrum weg.
Eigendlich wollte ich da heute noch hin...
Ich bin ziemlich geschockt muss ich sagen.
Der Kerl hat wohl von Gericht eine Einstweilige Verfåhung bekommen und trozdem.
5 Opfer und der Kerl.