Suburban violence ... a man lies injured on the road, directly opposite where the gunman opened fire. Credit:Eva Bradley/stuff.co.nz TV3 said sources told them Molenaar turned a weapon on himself as police closed in on him.

Two other policeman and a civilian, who reportedly tried to wrest a rifle away from Molenaar when he fired at them, remained in a critical condition in hospital with gunshot wounds.

The gunman at the centre of the siege has been described as a "one-man army" who has accepted he's going to die.

A spate of fresh gunfire was heard this afternoon. Up to 20 shots were heard just after 5pm local time (3pm AEDT). There was an initial volley of around 10 shots followed by a number of separate shots.

Molenaar fatally shot one policeman and seriously wounded two others and a civilian during what was supposed to be a low-risk cannabis raid on Thursday morning in the quiet central North Island town of Napier. The body of the dead officer, Senior Constable Len Snee, is still lying next to his police car in view of the fully-armed gunman.

At a press conference today, Eastern District Commander Superintendent Sam Hoyle said police were prepared to wait it out. "This could be over in five minutes or it could be another five days." Police were continuing "tense" negotiations, Superintendent Hoyle said. But he would not elaborate on whether any demands had been made.

"We are dealing with a very complex character and as you may expect in negotiations that go on for this length of time he goes through various mood swings." Molenaar was believed to be heavily armed. "We understand he has a lot of ammunition available to him," he said.

Friends of Molenaar told the newspaper he had been a territorial soldier attached to the armoured corps from 1982 to 1988. They described him as a "one-man army" and a "nightmare waiting to happen". "The guy is a total Rambo, OK? I've never met another person that's fitter than him," said a man described as his business partner.

"He's a very good marksman, he's just the wrong person. Wrong person, wrong place, wrong time, the police should have ... known. That's their business." Others told journalists he had known police had been watching the place and was likely to have wired it with explosives. "There's enough there to take that house off the face of the planet," his friend Tony Moore told the newspaper. Police Superintendent Sam Hoyle said on Friday that police "remain hopeful that the gunman will talk with us and give himself up". But Moore said Molenaar had acted as if he intended to die when saying goodbye to his partner, who left the property a short time after the siege began.

"He said 'Goodbye, hon', had a good blubber about it, and then: 'Best you go.' So he's already accepted his fate." The raid was over Molenaar's alleged involvement in a marijuana operation but friends said he was only an "occasional" pot smoker and not into pure methamphetamine or P, a drug linked to psychotic episodes and paranoia. His mother, Anna, went on national television on Thursday night to apologise and question how it had come to this. "I don't know why they grow up and become vicious," she told TV One. "What are they trying to protect ... a silly marijuana plant? What a thing to protect, take someone's life.

Loading "Now someone has been shot and two others. I can't quite believe it really." DPA, AAP