By Cliff Radel
Enquirer staff writer

First come the sounds. A sickening thud! The crash of broken glass.

Then come the feelings. Dread and fear.

A rock thrower has done his damage. A vehicle's window is shattered. A driver is shaken. A sick summer ritual continues.

"It's very unsettling, something you'll never forget," said Phil Lind, director of Metro's Bond Hill division.

When he drove buses for a living, Lind knew what it was like to be behind the wheel of a rock-thrower's target. He commiserates with drivers whose buses have been pelted this summer at the corner of Reading and Forest in Avondale.

Already this summer, vandals have caused $3,293 in damages and broken 16 bus windows. Miraculously, in this first rash of such behavior in a decade, no Metro riders or drivers have been hurt.

Kerri Danner, a Cheviot mother of two, can't say the same. She took a rock to the forehead as she drove her new Saturn on the afternoon of July 21.

As soon as she was hit, Danner checked on her daughter. Seven-year-old Madison sat unharmed in the front passenger seat.

Mom was not as fortunate. From where the rock hit, blood streamed down Danner's face.

Seconds earlier, she had been driving down Westwood's Montana Avenue. Suddenly, a 2-pound rock the size of a cantaloupe seemingly came out of nowhere. Police believe someone threw it from a passing car.

The rock plowed across the hood of Danner's car, smashed a hole in her windshield and struck her forehead.

The car suffered $2,000 in damages. The driver came away with cuts and bruises on her face and severely strained neck muscles.

"I know I'm lucky to be here and telling this story," Danner said as she sat in her dining room.

Her wings have been clipped for the summer. She can only drive to and from her physical therapy sessions. She can't bring herself to drive by the scene of the crime.

"Brings back too many bad memories."

Since encountering the rock, Danner has been on a mission. Besides seeing the thrower brought to justice, she wants drivers to be aware of these incidents' frequency - and to beware of airborne objects. She also wants people to know the penalties for hitting a moving vehicle with a rock.

"We had so many pavers and rocks hitting buses at Reading and Forest in June and July, we ran out of our stock of replacement windows," Lind said.

Since police beefed up their presence at the intersection, Metro has been able to replenish its supply of windows.

Rock throwing is "a summertime thing," said Cincinnati Police Detective Sgt. Scott Albert, the investigator of the bus hits. Among some teens, "it becomes the thing to do because kids are idle."

They have time on their hands - plus rocks, pavers and BB guns.

"We constantly have reports of car windows being broken out," said Green Township Police Lt. Col. Bart West.

"Not a week goes by without this happening. Most are in the middle of the night. But the windows are usually shot out by a BB gun."

Cincinnati Police Specialist Douglas Lindle is investigating Danner's case. At the scene of her accident, he told her he was already looking into another rock-throwing incident. The week before, a driver had been hit in Price Hill.

So far, the cases "don't fit the same pattern," Lindle said. He declined to supply details.

Both cases do share this similarity: They carry the same charges.

Anyone caught throwing a rock at a moving vehicle will be charged with criminal damaging, the standard vandalism charge, and felonious assault.

"With felonious assault you're talking jail time," Albert said.

Convictions can carry a prison sentence of anywhere from two to eight years.

As far as Danner's concerned, the more jail time, the better.

"What they did to me," she said, "is attempted murder."

E-mail cradel@enquirer.com