Inquiring Minds Want To Know; What Kind Of Wood Was It?

This story and photo were on The Blaze, and it's a good one.  This heinous perpetrator kicked in a door and was clobbered in the face by a piece of firewood.  My first thought was "It must not have been SOFT maple!"  But seriously, I would like to know what it was, and the reporter did not provide that info.  There is a nice indentation above the right eye from a bark imprint.  White oak is flaky or ridgy, so that's not it.  Hickory will have plates or narrow ridges depending on the species, so that's out.  It might have been black oak, because its bark can be blocky, and it is relatively hard.  But if I had to bet, I think it was persimmon.  Persimmon has hard little blocks of bark, and persimmon was used for making golf clubs.  Quoting a departed friend with an interesting vocabulary, "It's harder than hammered Hell!"

Photo credit: The Blaze, and Raleigh, Wake City Bureau of Identification