MetroRail service was disrupted Monday morning after a package containing a cow tongue embedded with nails, a note and a photograph was found between the tracks in East Austin.
Just after 7 a.m., a passerby noticed the package, wrapped in white butcher paper with red tape on it, sitting on the railroad ties between the rails about 100 feet west of Fifth and Chicon streets, Capital Metro spokesman Adam Shaivitz said. As a precaution, Capital Metro truncated the runs of the several remaining morning southbound trains so that they would not pass the spot where the parcel was found and canceled the one remaining northbound train from the downtown station.
Austin police officers removed the parcel from the tracks and X-rayed it, said John Jones, Capital Metro’s interim security manager. When the nails were discovered, the police department’s crime-scene unit was called in to investigate, Jones said.
A beef tongue about a foot long was wrapped in the paper, and the meat was studded with nails. There was also a glass jar nearby with an unidentified liquid in it, Jones said. The butcher paper had a message on the inside that included a series of names and a series of unpunctuated words: “Against us stop now close the mouth.”
Full story: Package with cow tongue puts kink in morning trains