The Maine Drug Enforcement Agency and Windham Police Department combined efforts to arrest a couple from Gray for unlawful operation of a methamphetamine laboratory, the state’s first meth-related bust of 2016, according to Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Steve McCausland.

Being held at the Cumberland County Jail are Charles McNeice, 46, and Nicole Adams, 33, both from Gray. Maine ended 2015 with 56 meth lab incidents.

On Monday morning, Windham police were called to the area of 23 Tower Road in Windham for a report of a suspicious vehicle. Officers located the vehicle and then found a box near it that contained the items needed to manufacture methamphetamine.

Members of the MDEA Clandestine Laboratory Enforcement Team responded to assist Windham police at the scene. Additional items needed in the manufacturing process were located in the vehicle, ammonium nitrate and pseudoephedrine tablets.

McCausland said the investigation showed that McNeice and Adams had purchased the items a short time before they were discovered by officers and that McNeice was preparing to begin the process to convert the items into methamphetamine.

McNeice was also charged last year with a meth lab incident in Oxford and had been out on bail from that previous charge. McNeice and Adams were scheduled to appear in Cumberland County Court Wednesday afternoon.

Charles McNeiceNicole Adams