Simi Valley Resident on Track of Vandals Who Hurled Bowling Ball : Crime: Since his wife’s windshield was smashed, Ron Wood has contacted neighbors for help in the search.

Ron Wood had never noticed the curious round marks dotting the curb near his Simi Valley home.

Not until Thursday, that is, when he realized those tiny circles came from bowling balls like the one that smashed through his wife’s windshield, just missing her head.

Those marks confirmed for Wood that it was not the first time someone had hurled a bowling ball from the top of Flanagan Drive in Indian Hills to watch it smack the curb and shatter hundreds of feet below on Yosemite Avenue.

In the week since his wife’s car was hit, Wood, a retired snack-food salesman, has been alerting neighbors and bowling alleys of the problem, asking them to help nail the culprits.

Although Wood has told the story now at least a hundred times, he still gets angry as he recounts the incident.

His wife Winifred was driving home after dark. As she rounded the corner onto Flanagan she was blinded by headlights coming toward her.

Just as she began to slow down, the ball burst through her windshield, bouncing to the back of her Jeep Grand Cherokee with a thud. Badly shaken but not injured, she saw a small white car full of youths speeding from the scene.

“She had glass in her mouth,” Wood said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s attempted murder.”

Lt. Tony Harper, a spokesman for the Simi Valley Police Department, said the matter is under investigation but police have no suspects.

“We are looking at it very seriously,” he said. “This is a serious problem that could lead to someone getting hurt or killed.”

Unsatisfied with the police response, a neighbor of Wood called City Councilman Paul Miller, urging him to take action.

So Miller, a former Simi Valley police chief, penned a memo Wednesday to the city manager calling the street bowling “a new phenomenon among the brain-damaged younger generation.”

Miller has also asked that the city put a fence around a construction site near the top of Flanagan, where youths are said to congregate.

And on Thursday afternoon, Miller decided to do some sleuthing on his own. It was Miller who first noticed the small round marks smudged into the curb.

He then began rummaging in the thick bushes at the foot of Flanagan, soon discovering a sizable dark orange fragment of a bowling ball.

Etched into the surface were: the brand, Earl Anthony; the material, ebonite; the type of ball, magnum six; and the bowling alley it came from, Harley’s Simi Bowl.

Miller shook his head. “I’d like to know what these alleys are doing to keep this from happening,” he said.

But Doug Krasner, a manager at Harley’s, said there is little that can be done.

“Balls have been stolen for the last 20 years from every bowling alley in the country,” he said. “It is physically impossible to screen every person who walks in here between 8 a.m. and 2 a.m.”

At Brunswick Valley Bowl, manager Ken Knox has posted a photograph of the Wood’s shattered windshield, along with a note asking patrons to watch out for ball thieves.

Meanwhile, Ron Wood is determined to continue his search for the perpetrators and his effort to stop street bowling.

“It is a stupid game made up by stupid kids,” he said. “This is not something we should have to put up with.”