Suspicious Shoe Box Has Police Scrambling Box In Black Plastic Found At Justice’s Door

When her security people took Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor home Friday, they noticed something suspicious on the front porch. It lay just to the left of the door and was wrapped in black plastic.

“About the size of a shoe box,” said a representative of one of the five police agencies that swung into action when the suspicious object was reported about 4 p.m. The FBI activated its terrorism task force. The Maryland state fire marshal dispatched a bomb squad.

Montgomery County sent police and fire rescue. Police from Chevy Chase, where O’Connor lives, helped to rope off Oxford Street and evacuate five surrounding houses.

“Two concurrent investigations took place,” said Dan Gilman, spokesman for Montgomery Fire Rescue. “One was to find out what the package was. The second was to learn where it might have come from.”

In this case, the two investigations meshed beautifully. Before any X-rays could be taken or explosive-sniffing dogs led up to the porch, someone asked Justice O’Connor whether she might have sent away for any shoes.

“It was determined,” Gilman said, “that there was a potential that shoes were involved.” Tennis shoes, to be exact. Tretorns. Someone phoned the company to ask how it wrapped its mail orders. The answer came back: Shrink wrap. Black.

To be on the safe side, a bomb technician was sent to confirm it. In a puffy black protective suit, the technician waddled slowly up Oxford Street in the slanting late-afternoon sunlight. When he reached the porch and picked up the box, the problem became obvious: The shoe box had landed with its label face down.

Without that showing, it looked menacing indeed, a Montgomery police officer said.

“I’m a nobody in life,” he said, “and if I walked up and saw that package on my front porch, I’d run like hell.”