A Vicksburg husband and wife were ordered held on $250,000 bond each Wednesday, a day after methamphetamine was found in the Cherry Street home they shared with their two toddlers.

Charles D. White, 27, and Bethany Ann White, 25, were sent back to the Warren County Jail after their initial court appearance before Justice Court Judge Richard Bradford.

Each was charged with possession of methamphetamine, manufacturing methamphetamine and child abuse.

When a search warrant was served Tuesday night, the Whites’ two children, ages 1 and 4, were in a room adjacent to the spot in the home at 2409 Cherry St., where at least 23 batches of the highly explosive methamphetamine had been cooked, said Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace. He said the processed drug had a street value of about $30,000.

In court, a combative Bethany White denied that crystal meth was on a plate in her house.

“My children were not in danger,” she said.

Vicksburg Police Chief Tommy Moffett saw it differently.

“The children were in a dangerous situation and needed to be taken care of,” he said. “They obviously had no concern for the children or their neighbors.”

What was identified as a methamphetamine lab was found in a downstairs garage in the house, about 15 feet from a next-door neighbor’s home.

Following the arrests, which came after a months-long investigation by the Warren County Sheriff’s Department and the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, Pace said officers were surprised to find the meth operation in the city neighborhood, pointing out that labs usually are found in rural, isolated spots.

“It just goes to show what a terrible scourge drugs are in our community,” Jeff Giambrone, who formerly lived in the same house with his wife and daughter and sold it two years ago, said in an e-mail.

The Whites’ case is expected to be presented to the January term of the Warren County grand jury, Pace said.

The bust followed by about three weeks what authorities called a meth lab explosion on Poole Road in the county, which left three men in the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Ga.

Injured were George Alexander, 48, 354 Poole Road; Kenneth A. Downs, 44, 1315 Boy Scout Road; and Clifford Aubrey Geter, 37, 301 N. Fairview Drive.

No charges had been brought against any of them pending results of tests at the Mississippi Crime Lab.

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Contact Elizabeth Jones at ejones@vicksburgpost.com.