posted 06-24-2005 08:28 PM         

BLUFFTON -- A South Carolina Law Enforcement Division bomb squad rushed to the Bluffton Post Office by helicopter on Thursday morning after postal workers noticed a suspicious package -- only to find two adult toys inside, police said.
The Bluffton Police Department received a call at about 9:30 a.m. after post office employees grew concerned about a white packing envelope laying by itself in a loading area, Bluffton Police Chief John Brown said.

"When they went to check it out," Brown said, "it was vibrating."
Within minutes of the call, police evacuated a dozen employees from the building at 25 Thurmond Way to the Bluffton library, on the other side of the Bluffton Village development.

Firefighters and emergency medical personnel arrived to remain on standby, while police cordoned off the area and called the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office SWAT team, which called SLED. An FBI special agent and postal inspectors soon arrived on scene.

"It turned out to be a novelty gift," Brown said.

Police think the package may have been dropped as mail was being loaded or unloaded.

Despite the surprise ending, the police chief said incident was a "textbook" example of cooperation between the agencies.

A SLED helicopter descended at about 11:40 a.m. to drop off two bomb technicians and left about seven minutes later, once they had unloaded.

They soon removed the contents of the package and saw there was no bomb inside. Actually, there were two vibrators.

"We don't ever just open something," said special agent Jim Lowder, one of the bomb specialists.

Lowder declined to go into specifics about examining the package, citing security procedures.

Police opened the entrances to the area at about 12:10 p.m., and post office employees trekked across the parking lot back to work. Thursday afternoon, the office had returned to normal.

Lisa Holman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Charlotte, said two postal inspectors responded to the incident, one from South Carolina and one from Georgia.

"At some point, they will decide to return it to the sender or the receiver," Holman said of the package. "They haven't decided that yet."