Suspected bullet fired through elderly couple's window

Stephen and Phyllis Garraway can't find the object that came unexpectedly flying through their window one night last week.

An elderly couple who had what they suspect was a bullet fired through their lounge window had only moved into the house a few weeks beforehand.

Stephen and Phyllis Garraway, who are both in their early 90s, were watching television one evening after 9pm when the window of their Acacia Bay Rd home was broken by a cracking sound.

When they investigated, they found a small round hole in their window but no indication of where it might have come from.

To add to their puzzlement, the window faces onto a driveway, it was dark and raining heavily outside, and any shot or stone would have had to have been fired at close range.

The object came from the outside as there was glass left on the inside window ledge, but it's a mystery as to where it ended up.

The Garraways called police, who came and searched the lounge, but failed to turn up the mystery object.

"We heard a terrific crack and I thought it was the television. I didn't know what it was," Mr Garraway says.

As an ex-Army paratrooper, Mr Garraway knows what bullet holes look like, and he's convinced that nothing but a bullet or perhaps a projectile fired at high speed could have left such a hole.

His friend Cliff Joy, also a former Army man, agrees, saying such a hole could only have been made by a small round pellet travelling very fast, although he said the entry angle was strange.

The couple only moved to Taupo from Tauranga a month ago and say apart from the damage to their window, they've been very happy in their new home and have lovely neighbours.

They haven't had any trouble since the bullet incident last week and hope it was just a one-off.

"Why should anybody want to shoot us? We haven't done anything to anybody."