Bainbridge Island Police Chief Matthew Hamner commended the officers who responded to last night’s stand off, which ended in the early morning hours Sunday when police shot and killed the gunman, a still-unidentified 34-year-old Seattle man, who was shooting at the island shoreline from a sailboat in Eagle Harbor.

“Obviously, the best outcome is that no one gets hurt and he gets help or whatever’s going on,” Hamner said. “No citizens were shot. No officers were shot and, sadly, his life ended. But, if it was going to end, it’s better than having three or four other people shot.”

There were no other injuries reported.

Information regarding the identity of the officers involved in the actual shooting, as well as the identity of the gunman, has not yet been released.

The active investigation is being handled by the Washington State Patrol, Hamner said, in keeping with Kitsap County policy.

“That is standard for officer-involved shootings,” he said. “All the agencies have signed on to that and we do that to make sure it’s an independent investigation.”

Bainbridge officials said 911 calls about a person shooting from a boat in Eagle Harbor started coming in to emergency dispatchers shortly after 8:30 p.m. Saturday, July 8.

The man reportedly began firing at officers responding to the scene after they arrived. He also fired random shots at the shoreline.

“He was firing shots everywhere — firing shots at boats at the shore and the officers,” Hamner said. “How nobody got hit’s a miracle.

“There were lots of people on the water. There were lots of people on the shore.”

Officials said the man was shot after members of the Kitsap County Regional SWAT team used boats belonging to the Kitsap County Sheriff and the Bainbridge Island Police Department to get close to the man’s vessel.

Authorities said the man pointed his weapon at officers and was then shot by police.

He later died from his injuries.

Hamner said that the shooting appeared to be directed at no specific target, and the man’s motives remained a mystery.

“It appears to be random,” he said. “He was firing randomly.

“To our knowledge, there was nothing that precipitated this.”

It is, however, just the latest in a small streak of uncharacteristically violent occurrences to have happened on Bainbridge Island as of late, including at least one other occasion that merited full SWAT team response.

“We’ve had three [SWAT] incidents in the past four weeks,” Hamner said. “Two of them were resolved peacefully. This one, obviously, not, and that’s disturbing for us.

“To have this many incidents in such a short amount of time is very, very rare for this community,” he added. “So it’s disturbing for the officers as I’m sure it’s disturbing for the community. And it’s not something we want to see continue to, so we’re hoping this trend ends today.”