LEWISTON – Sixth-grade students at Holy Cross School had a visit from Lewiston Police Department detectives recently. Officers Marc Robitaille and Dan Stone visited the literature class as part of a unit on crime mysteries.

Robitaille and Stone told the students on “real life” detective work in the community. The students took part in two interactive investigative assignments. In one, students were shown photos of injuries and asked to speculate on the cause of those injuries.

In the other, students were fingerprinted and other students analyzed the prints and compared them to the samples given by the detectives.

The students invited the detectives to their class after discussing the novel “Chasing Vermeer” by Blue Balliett. In the novel, two sixth-grade students team up to solve the mystery of a stolen Vermeer painting.

“Having the detectives visit helped the students make connections between the novel and their community, and it was an opportunity for the children to learn about an interesting career path,” said Peg DeBlois, literature teacher at Holy Cross School.

Eric Michaud said having the detectives visit class was interesting. “We learned a lot about how they track down criminals and how they spend their time during the day working on cases,” said Michaud.