A suspicious package with a swastika on it that was delivered yesterday to a Jewish lawyer's office in Glen Burnie turned out to contain a spent shotgun shell and a game called "To Kill A Lawyer," Dennis Weisberg, the lawyer, said.
He said the package -- a shirt box wrapped in brown paper that was addressed to him with letters cut out of newspapers and magazines and with the swastika where the postage should have been -- arrived at his office in the 7400 block of Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard about 1:10 p.m.
Mr. Weisberg's secretary, who was not identified, picked up the box, noticed the strange lettering, the swastika and the skeletons stamped on it. Afraid the package contained a bomb, she called Anne Arundel County police.
Police evacuated the office and called the county fire department and the state fire marshal's office. A deputy fire marshal took the package to Sawmill Creek Park and fired a shot into it, but the package did not detonate, police said.
Allen L. Ward, a spokesman for the fire marshal's office, said there was no bomb in the package.
Mr. Weisberg shares offices on the first floor of the building with attorney Anne Scher. The law offices of Stephen H. Schwartz are on the second floor.
Mr. Weisberg, 39, said he may have been the latest victim of hate crimes directed at Jews and blacks in the county. He said he specializes in business law and has a few collection cases in the courts but doesn't think anyone involved in those cases would send such a package.
Police haven't officially labeled the incident a hate crime, but it is one of several recently in which a swastika was used. Vandals spray-painted anti-Semitic slogans and swastikas on Kneseth Israel synagogue in Annapolis Dec. 11. Two days earlier, racist messages and swastikas had been spray-painted on a beauty shop in Edgewater that is owned by a black woman.
State police said that those incidents might have been related to a Ku Klux Klan rally in Annapolis Oct. 29.