LEWISTON – Police are investigating a pair of weekend break-ins during which area homes were entered while the occupants slept inside.

In a burglary on Cassell Street a handicapped woman was asleep in her wheelchair while thieves ransacked her home.

Police said that break-in appeared to have occurred in the early morning hours on Saturday. The 68-year-old woman was asleep in her wheelchair in the main part of the house while her husband slept in a back room.

The daughter of the couple said the lights and television were on when the culprits used a key to slip inside. Stolen was a wallet with cash in it, a cell phone cover and a bag of returnable bottles. She said kitchen cabinets and drawers had been rummaged by the thieves and her father’s pants had been moved from one room to another.

Her mother, she said, never awoke during the burglary.

“It’s pretty lame of someone to see a handicapped person lying there and still rob the place,” the daughter said. “They went right by my mother as she was sleeping.”

The daughter was not named to preserve the identities of the victims.

She believes the burglars found a key to the home in the ignition of the couple’s GMC truck, which was parked outside. The truck was stolen after the thieves left the home, police said.

It was found abandoned downtown, near Horton Street, where police said a second burglary was reported. Again, thieves entered a home and took money and other items while occupants were sleeping.

In the Horton Street break-in, police arrested 19-year-old Matthew Joseph Giguere of 21 Sand Hill Road and charged him with burglary and theft.

Police said in spite of the timing of the burglaries and the discovery of the stolen truck, it was not known if there was a link between the break-ins.