GREENLAND, N.H. - The hulking figure who authorities say opened fire from his home on a drug task force, killing the town’s police chief and wounding officers from four departments, was out on bail awaiting trial on charges of steroid possession and assault.

Officers had reason to believe that Cullen Mutrie could be armed and dangerous when they descended upon his home in this rural town outside Portsmouth Thursday evening to serve him with a search warrant.

That visit went fatally awry when Mutrie allegedly began shooting before police could get inside, striking four task force members, as well as the chief of Greenland’s small department, New Hampshire Attorney General Michael Delaney said.

Police Chief Michael Maloney, 48, was days from retirement when he was killed by a gunshot to the head.

In a press conference, the attorney general offered scant details on the firefight that erupted on normally sleepy Post Road, declining to answer questions about whether the task force members were wearing bulletproof vests or other protection, citing an ongoing investigation.

Delaney also did not explain why Maloney accompanied the specialized task force.

“The Attorney General’s Drug Task Force was executing a search warrant; several members were there,’’ Delaney said. “We warned the [Greenland police], and the police chief was involved in assisting with the execution of the warrant.’’

Delaney’s office did not return subsequent calls.

After the gunfire subsided, police negotiators made brief contact with Mutrie before a long stretch of quiet, prompting them to send a camera-equipped robot into Mutrie’s 1940s farmhouse early Friday. That led to the 2 a.m. discovery of Mutrie and a female companion, dead in what Delaney said was a murder-suicide or a double suicide; their autopsies will probably be conducted Saturday.