22 Shop Windows Smashed in New Attack by Roving Vandals

Merchants offered a $1,500 reward Wednesday in a running struggle with roving vandals, apparently armed with air guns or slingshots, who have shot out nearly 250 shop windows along Ventura Boulevard in the western San Fernando Valley since midsummer.

Twenty-two windows were shattered in the latest attacks last weekend, Los Angeles police said Wednesday.

Shopkeepers along the boulevard between Topanga Canyon and Balboa boulevards have been victimized for the last four months by the vandals, who sometimes shoot as many as 10 windows a night, police said.

“We consider this a very serious crime problem,” Lt. William Gaida said, noting that the average window costs $400 to $500 to replace, and some cost as much as $1,000.

Gaida said there are no solid leads in the investigation, but detectives believe the vandals are simply thrill-seeking youths who like to watch glass shatter. Police have staked out locations along the boulevard, but have had no luck in finding the vandals, he said.

Gaida said the windows apparently were shattered by a small projectile, such as a pellet from an air gun or a ball bearing fired from a slingshot, perhaps from a passing car. No projectiles have been found, however, he said.

The chambers of commerce of Tarzana, Encino and Woodland Hills on Wednesday offered $1,500 in rewards for information leading to the arrests and conviction of the vandals.

Merchants are frustrated and angry.

Douglas Baldwin, a salesman at Colton Piano & Organ Supermart in Tarzana, said the store has suffered smashed windows an average of every 10 days or so, and sometimes as often as twice a week.

The most recent attack--on Saturday night--sent jagged bits of glass raining down on a $24,000 Schimmel grand piano that was in the front window. Tiny shards wedged themselves in the keys of the piano, the most expensive in the showroom, rendering them inoperable. Its buffed mahogany finish was scarred by flying glass.

“It’s going to take quite a few miracles to bring it back,” Baldwin said.

Employees at Gordon’s Service in Tarzana consider themselves lucky. The Cadillac repair shop has been hit only twice, most recently on Saturday night when a glass pane about 10 feet square was smashed.

This is not the first time merchants along Ventura Boulevard have been tormented by vandals. Two years ago, three teen-agers used ball bearings fired from slingshots to shoot out dozens of car and shop windows.

Jeffrey S. Buice, 19, of Woodland Hills was sentenced in June, 1989, to 90 days in County Jail and ordered to pay $18,0000 in damages. Another teen-ager was placed on probation. Charges against the third were dropped on a technicality.

More recently, police in October arrested Guy Valiando, a 24-year-old transient, on suspicion of burglary in a series of window-smashings along the boulevard. Unlike the other crimes, however, police believe Valiando acted in order to gain entry to the shops and steal merchandise.

Bill Rust, owner of Budget Board-Ups of Sylmar, complained that although the broken windows are a boon to his business, they make him the target of suspicion. Rust said some shop owners accuse him of smashing their windows, comparing the ill will he feels from shopkeepers to accusations that tire repair shop operators litter the highways with nails and broken glass.

“We get blamed for it,” he said.

But he took it philosophically: “If glass doesn’t break, we don’t make a living.”