Review Bainbridge Island
Friday, April 27, 2018 | Vol. 94, No. 17 | WWW.BAINBRIDGEREVIEW.COM | 75¢
INSIDE: Retro-pop, A32
WSP: Eagle Harbor shooter talked of suicide, killing others before standoff BY BRIAN KELLY
BY LUCIANO MARANO
Kitsap News Group
The gunman killed by police last summer on his sailboat in Eagle Harbor was shot seven times, according to a Washington State Patrol investigation into the shooting. Robert D. Yeiser, 34, died at the end of a four-hour standoff in Eagle Harbor on the evening of July 8. Yeiser was shot by a police SWAT team as he stood on the deck of his sailboat, the Flying Gull, Robert D. Yeiser at the close of a confrontation that began when Yeiser started firing a rifle at random at the shoreline and homes around the harbor. In the Washington State Patrol’s report of the shooting, authorities said Yeiser had been talking about killing himself for more than six months before the standoff in Eagle Harbor, and a friend told police he found Yeiser “completely drunk and in the midst of a breakdown” when he visited earlier in the day. The friend also told police Yeiser drank two bottles of wine, then started on a bottle of whiskey, and had also been smoking marijuana, on the day of the shooting. “It really went downhill from there,” the friend told police, adding that Yeiser began to complain about being abused as a child, and then threatened to kill his parents. The investigative report from
Messenger House to close doors Kitsap News Group
Image courtesy of WSP
Robert D. Yeiser aims a rifle at SWAT officers from the deck of his sailboat, the Flying Gull, seconds before the end of the deadly standoff last summer in Eagle Harbor. Washington State Patrol on the officer-involved shooting, which was finished on April 3 and released this week to the Bainbridge Review under the state’s open records law, offers new details on Yeiser’s violent end in Eagle Harbor last summer. Authorities said earlier they had tried for hours to get Yeiser to surrender peacefully and step off his sailboat, but Yeiser was shot multiple times after he aimed a rifle at SWAT officers in the boats pulling
up next to his sailboat. Yeiser’s friend, who had known him for five years, told police he had tried to get Yeiser to pull himself together when he met him on the day of the shooting. He said he tried to take Yeiser crabbing, but Yeiser started yelling at him and at passing boats so the excursion was called off. Back on his friend’s boat, the pair got into an argument after Yeiser kicked his friend’s dog off a couch. Yeiser came back a half hour
later “and began an ‘apologetic rant’ about how when people die their evil spirits turn to dust and everyone absorbs the dust. Bob [Yeiser] explained that [the friend’s] dog had absorbed a lot of the dust and Bob could feel it coming off the dog so he kicked it to get the evil spirits away.” After Yeiser left his friend’s boat, the friend moved his boat to a different part of Eagle Harbor. TURN TO SHOOTER | A31
Bainbridge Island’s only privately owned skilled nursing facility, Messenger House Care Center, is set to close, forcing residents and staff alike to begin seeking alternative homes and places of work. Though no actual “last day” has yet been announced, the nursing home, located on Manitou Park Boulevard, is expected to be completely vacant in the next three to four months. Scott Hale, president of Symmetry Healthcare Management, was brought in as a consultant to coordinate the closure. He said ultimately 51 residents will have to be relocated from the facility, which was founded in the 1960s. “An actual nursing home closure can be complicated process,” Hale said. “So we’re kind of getting ahead of that so it’s more, at least at this level, a participatory function.” Hale said that no formal 60- or 90-day notices have yet been issued to Messenger House residents, as the actual closure process is yet to be finalized and approved by government officials. Nevertheless, staff are now assisting clients in finding new homes. “We’re trying to spread this out a little bit,” Hale said. TURN TO MESSENGER | A9