CONWAY -- Police investigating the shooting deaths of Maumelle's public-works director and his wife said they had detained one person for questioning Wednesday.
The Conway Police Department had "a person of interest in custody in what appears to be a double homicide," the department said in an update on Twitter about 3:45 p.m.
A niece of the couple identified the victims as Robert and Patricia Cogdell and said he worked for the city of Maumelle. Both were 66. On Wednesday evening, police confirmed the victims' names.
"In talking to family members and friends, that led us to a person of interest" who is being questioned, police spokesman LaTresha Woodruff said as officers nearby scoured the area, the bodies still present.
"We don't know if anyone else is involved in this, or if that person is our suspect," Woodruff added.
Police were called to the scene at 1:16 p.m. and found the Cogdells' bodies lying near a large, white shed that sits across a driveway from the couple's home at 4803 Quail Run Circle. The brick house is on a largely undeveloped street just yards off the busy Dave Ward Drive in west Conway.
Both victims were shot, Woodruff said. But she said she didn't have more specific information on their wounds.
The bodies were found outside, but police believe the woman was shot in a car in the couple's garage and that she "was taken" to the tree-lined area near the shed and left near her husband, Woodruff said.
Police discovered the bodies after the man's employer "got concerned" when he didn't show up for work Tuesday and asked police to do a welfare check, she said.
Other details, such as whether police had found the gun used in the shootings, were not immediately released.
Leaning against a police vehicle outside the home, the couple's niece, Corrie Gillion, told reporters that she had last seen her aunt on Tuesday.
Gillion said she couldn't imagine anyone who would want to kill the Cogdells because, "they're too generous," and "gentle."
"She calls me every day," she said of her aunt.
Police were trying to "figure out exactly what happened," Woodruff said as officers rushed to scour the scene before a thunderstorm hit the area.
Just moments before the storm, authorities loaded two yard-waste bags of potential evidence into a police vehicle.
Maumelle Mayor Mike Watson said Robert Cogdell had been the city's director of public works for 30 years and was the only person to hold the position since the city's founding in 1985.
"He was a very dedicated city employee," Watson said. "And this is hard right now. He always tried to take care of the citizens of Maumelle as best he could."
State Desk on 07/23/2015