An enraged husband fatally shot his longtime wife and then turned the gun on himself in an apparent murder-suicide on Long Island Thursday morning, police said.
Cops found William Clifford, 73, with a gunshot wound to the head on his front lawn and a gun lying at his feet in Islip around 6:30 a.m., according to officials.
Moments earlier, a garbage truck driver — who was trained in CPR — spotted him, “examined the body, determined he was beyond help [and] called 911 operators,” Suffolk County Police Homicide Squad Detective Lt. Kevin Beyrer told reporters.
Inside the four-bedroom home on Parsons Landing and St. Marks Lane, cops found his wife, Eileen Clifford, 68, dead in a pool of blood.
Beyrer said the doomed couple was married “for a number of years” and “neighbors described them as very nice.”
Nearby residents were startled to see swarms of cops in their sleepy, tree-lined neighborhood.
“I’m shocked and surprised because we don’t have anything happen here,” a neighbor told News 12 Long Island. “It’s a very quiet, sleepy little town where nothing ever happens.”
