Bomb Hurled Through Window Injures Sleeping Couple : Attack: Simi Valley woman undergoes surgery for leg injuries. Police have no suspects or motive.

A sleeping couple were injured early Saturday when a pipe bomb was hurled through a front window of their home and exploded between them as they lay in bed, police said.

Charlene Mayer, 33, suffered major injuries to her left leg and underwent surgery at Simi Valley Hospital. Her husband, John Monroe, 34, suffered shrapnel wounds to his left leg and torso but was not hospitalized.

Police said the explosion occurred just before 5 a.m. as the couple slept in the front bedroom of their home on Lundy Drive on the southwest side of Simi Valley.

“They were awakened by the device coming through their window,” Police Lt. Bob Klamser said.

Monroe’s relatives said he told them the bomb landed between him and his wife and exploded as he tried to push it off the king-size bed. The mattress absorbed much of the bomb’s force and “went a long way toward protecting the victims,” Klamser said.

“Whoever did this intended to kill the people in that room,” Klamser said, adding that the case is being investigated as an attempted murder. “This bomb was more than capable of doing that.”

He declined to describe the bomb in detail, except to say that it was made from a large pipe and was “more sophisticated than a common pipe bomb.”

Monroe’s brother, Jay Monroe, said he was told that the device was a fragmentation bomb with incendiary capability. Such a bomb typically includes fuel that causes a fire after the initial explosion of shrapnel.

The explosion started a small fire in the couple’s bedroom but they were able to smother it with blankets, Klamser said. Police estimated damage at $1,000 and said it was confined to the bedroom.

Mayer’s 11-year-old daughter was sleeping in another bedroom and was not hurt, police said.

Klamser said police had no suspects and knew of no motive for the attack. Jay Monroe and other family members said they have a suspect but they refused to identify the person.

“We have a good idea who it is,” Jay Monroe said. His sister, Tammy Schuyler, said that when relatives learned of the bombing, “we all thought the same thing.”

But they and other relatives, who drove from their homes in the San Fernando Valley to watch over the house, said the bomb might have been intended for a former resident.

Mayer and John Monroe moved to the rented house from Moorpark less than two weeks ago, relatives said. Monroe owns an auto restoration business in Chatsworth and Mayer works at a drugstore in Simi Valley, they said. Like Mayer, Monroe has been married before and has a son who was not living at the house.

Police removed most of the contents of the damaged bedroom, including the mattress, for analysis, Klamser said. Assisted by the sheriff’s bomb squad and two bomb-sniffing dogs from the Point Mugu Navy base, officers searched the neighborhood but found no other explosives and no witnesses.

Nathalie Fagan, who lives across the street from the yellow stucco ranch house where the explosion occurred, said she was awakened about 5 a.m. “I thought it was a gunshot,” she said. “Then with all the wind we’ve been having, I thought maybe a tree had blown down.”

Fagan has lived in Simi Valley for 14 years. “I’ve never heard of anything like this happening in Simi,” she said.