SACRAMENTO, CA (KTXL/CNN) - Nearly three weeks ago, on June 28, at the office of the Sacramento Valley Council on American-Islamic Relations, a package arrived containing a sealed plastic food container.
"Just another case file perhaps, but it smelled a little funky," Katelyn Costa of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Sacramento said.
A closer inspection of the package then made them stop and call police.
"We did not know what would be inside. We thought we saw a book, it was probably the Quran, but we let the authorities open it," Costa said.
"When our officers arrived and determined what it was, it was a Quran that had been sent to them packaged in a substance that appeared to be pork fat or pork lard," Linda Matthew with the Sacramento police said.
This incident came just days after two area Mosques, one in Sacramento, and the other in Davis, were vandalized.
Those incidents though were classified as hate crimes, this one however, falls into a different category.
"We are looking into it as hate-related activity. However, there was no actual crime committed," Matthew said.
Investigators with Sac PD have been working with the region's threat-assessment center, who was able to determine that the package was sent from Houston, TX.
"Through the investigation the detectives were able to determine the package was shipped by a female, white adult in her 40's or 50's," Matthew said.
The person who sent the package also wrote some hateful and menacing messages on the pages of the Quran, and there is no doubt the way the Council on American-Islamic Relations is viewing this latest act.
"Definitely hateful. We're going to let the authorities determine if it's a crime or not. But this is part of a rash of hate incidents,” Costa said. “There were three in June, and it's just part of a larger up-tick in hateful incidents across the country."
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