It’s hard to understand why it took the King County Prosecutor’s Office nearly four months to charge Islander Jon Kunkel with first-degree murder for the fatal shooting of Ron Childers. To those of us on the sidelines, it does not seem like a complex case.

Several of his tenants were in his split-level home on 87th Avenue S.W. when the incident occurred. Childers was shot at close range with a 12-gauge shotgun. Initially, Kunkel didn’t even deny that he killed the Vashon landscaper and handyman; he told officers he did so in self-defense.

Was the delay in the charge due to backlogs at the state’s crime lab? Was it because Kunkel left the state for a while, and investigators, following his every move, were awaiting his return? Were mistakes made at the crime scene, hampering the investigation and slowing the process?

We’ll likely never know. But like many Islanders, we at The Beachcomber are glad an arrest and charge were finally made.

Of course, Kunkel is innocent until proven guilty. And of course, we hope that he has a strong defense team that works assiduously for his best interests. One person who knows him said that Kunkel was abused as a kid. If true, it only adds another painful layer to this tragedy.

At the same time, this was a homicide that traumatized a lot of people — tenants who lived at the house he still owns, Childers’ widow, Kunkel’s neighbors, even some of the many people who did business with this ambitious young man. The fact that he was arrested the night of the homicide, was released two days later and seemingly waltzed back into his pre-homicide life was chilling to those close to the incident. It was particularly painful to those who were in the house at the time of the shooting, some of whom not only have had to deal with the trauma of the incident but have also faced the hardship of finding affordable housing on an Island that has very little of it.

So here at The Beachcomber, we’re not rushing to judgment. We know Kunkel has not yet been convicted of a crime. But we’re aslo very glad that a major step has been taken in this painfully long investigation, and we hope the rest of the proceedings move forward with dispatch.