Bell County deputies received a call about 10:45 a.m. from a neighbor reporting a man in his 70s lying motionless in the driveway of a house in the 5500 block of Cliff Lane.

When deputies arrived on the scene, they discovered the man had a single gunshot wound to his head. Inside the house in the kitchen was a woman in her 60s with similar wounds.

The couple was identified as Raymond and Virginia Miller by Justice of the Peace Ted Duffield, who ordered an autopsy.

The Millers’ neighbor, Patsy Rendon, was on her way to a doctor’s appointment when she noticed an abnormal scene across the street from her home.

As soon as Mrs. Rendon saw the elderly man lying in the driveway, she backed up to her house and asked her husband dial 911.

“This is bad,” she said, recalling her thoughts at that moment.

When Mrs. Rendon and her husband approached the man, she said they immediately saw fluid surrounding his head.

At first Mrs. Rendon said she thought the man had slipped and hit his head but as they got closer she said she knew it was much worse.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Mrs. Rendon said. “It’s unnerving.”

Her husband followed orders from a police dispatcher and checked to see if Miller was still breathing, but Rendon said he felt he was already dead.

“I didn’t know what to make of it,” Rendon said. “I think I almost went into shock. I was running and trying to scream and I have laryngitis.”

Mrs. Rendon has lived in the neighborhood for nearly 20 years, but did not know the couple very well.

“They were older and kept to themselves,” she said.

The Rendons weren’t the only neighbors shocked.

As Debbie Williams took her children for a walk this morning, she had no idea what they would come across.

Mrs. Williams said they saw the blood, and her children were shocked.

“I’m at a loss for words,” she said. “It’s tragic.”

While Mrs. Williams and her children didn’t really know the couple, she said the children did sell cookie dough to Miller recently.

Mrs. Williams said her children had been trying to sell cookie dough to residents in the neighborhood but he was the only one who bought from them.

“He was really nice,” Mrs. Williams said. “He even gave them extra money.”

But she also mentioned that her children had seen guns in the couple’s garage that same day.

Elick Nejtek lives two doors down from the couple, but he said he had never formally met them.

“I just waved going in and out,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

He said the couple had only lived in the area for about eight months.

“It’s kind of weird,” he said.

lfrase@temple-telegram.com