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OCEAN SPRINGS — Shocked parents took their young children to the emergency room Tuesday night and Wednesday when they got word from police that a home day care had been raided for methamphetamine.
Some parents took off work on Wednesday so they could get the drug screening and the X-ray for their child that police recommended.
Ocean Springs Detective John Flowers said the department was flooded with calls Wednesday because Brenda Jane Sumrall, 64, has been keeping children in her Stennis Avenue home day care for years until the raid Tuesday night.
Most recently, she was caring for nine children, including her grandchild.
The Narcotics Task Force of Jackson County raided the home business around 7 p.m., when all the children were gone, and found two inactive meth labs and other material used in the final process of cooking the drug.
A city building official condemned the house, declaring it unsafe and off limits, because the chemicals that are used and the fumes that are created when making meth are highly dangerous.
Sumrall, her husband Henry Alfred Sumrall, 67, and a woman who worked for the Sumralls and lived at the house, were all arrested and given an initial appearance in county court Wednesday, along with Mark Timothy Sumrall, their son, who is accused of manufacturing the drug within 1,500 feet of a day care, generating waste from the drug and child endangerment.
Judge Larry Wilson set bond at $135,000 each for Brenda and Henry Sumrall and the other caregiver. He based it on the nine counts of child endangerment that each of them face with a bond of $15,000 per count.
Mark Sumrall, 45 and recently released from prison, lived in a semi-attached apartment at the house and told Judge Wilson that he had been living there for two months.
He moved home in early September, when he was given early release on a 2004 cocaine conviction.
Wilson said Mark Sumrall would be sent back to the penitentiary.
The Sumralls’ attorney, Arthur Carlisle, pleaded with Wilson to lower the couple’s bond, saying they’ve never been in trouble in their lives, they weren’t a flight risk and their only mistake was “being kind enough to let their son stay there.”
But Wilson said letting their son stay there was part of the problem. They are charged with “willfully and unlawfully” causing or permitting a minor child to be present where a person was manufacturing a schedule II controlled substance.
Brenda Sumrall came to tears several times during the proceeding and Henry Sumrall sat in a wheelchair with a neck brace.
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