The rampage in Cumbria was the deadliest mass shooting since 1996 in Britain, where gun ownership is tightly restricted and handguns are banned.
The deadly spree "has shocked the people of Cumbria and around the country to the core," Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde said.
Officers found Derrick Bird's body in woods near the Lake District village of Boot. Hyde said two weapons were recovered from the scene.
The shootings occurred in the town of Whitehaven and nearby Seascale and Egremont, about 350 miles northwest of London. The area is popular with hikers and vacationers.
Health service spokesman Nigel Calvert said three of the injured were in a critical condition in the hospital.
Hyde said there were 30 separate crime scenes. Witnesses described seeing the gunman driving around shooting out the window of his car. His victims included a woman on a bicycle, a farmer in his field and at least two fellow taxi drivers.
Barrie Walker, a doctor in Seascale who certified one of the deaths, told the BBC that victims had been shot in the face, apparently with a shotgun.
Witness Alan Hannah told the Whitehaven News that he saw a man with a shotgun in a car near a taxi stand in Whitehaven. Photos showed a body, covered in a sheet, lying in a street in the town.
The BBC reported that detectives said Bird drove to the central Lake District in a Citroen Picasso and abandoned it in the Boot area. Hyde said a body thought to be Bird's was then found in a wooded area, the BBC reported.
Last people to see Cumbrian gunman Derrick Bird the night before his killing spree tried to talk him out of his depression
- http://images.mirror.co.uk/collections/m4_news/bg_dotted_yellow.gif); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 20px; width: 70px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 14px; background-position: 0% 100%; background-repeat: repeat no-repeat; ">
Exclusive by Sarah Arnold 6/06/2010
The last people to see Derrick Bird the night before his killing spree told yesterday how they tried in vain to talk him out of his depression.
A morose, disturbed, "zombie-like" Bird arrived at the front door of his friend and neighbour Neil Jacques at 8pm on Tuesday.
Neil, 52, and his wife Carol ushered him in, sat him down in their front room and listened intently as he sat with his head in his hands, saying over and over how he feared going to jail for tax evasion.
After nearly five hours on their sofa, 10 doors down from his own home in the Cumbrian village of Rowrah, Bird left at 12.45am - promising to be in touch the next day. But in the early hours, he burst into his twin brother David's house, shooting him dead in his bed, before turning on solicitor Kevin Commons and going on his rampage.
Analysis
Massacres like Columbine and Virginia Tech have been interpreted as particularly grisly ways for Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold and Seung-Hui Cho to achieve celebrity. To an extent this was true - in the videos filmed prior to the shootings Harris and Klebold fantasised about their own post-massacre biopics. Cho saw himself as a Jesus-like freedom fighter. But this is part of a broader psychopathology of 'taking control' and self-assertion vis an uncaring and indifferent world.
