Henry Lynch II is no Ethan Hunt. That much is clear after Lynch and another University of Kentucky student were charged with third degree burglary earlier this week after Lynch allegedly crawled through an air duct and lowered himself into a professor’s office to steal a copy of a final exam for a statistics class.
According to police reports obtained by the Lexington Herald Leader, UK statistics professor John Cain was working late in his office Tuesday. He took a break around midnight and later returned to find the door for his third-floor office blocked. When Cain threatened to call campus police, he said the door flew open and two men ran out of the office and down the hallway.
"Shortly after police arrived, one of the students returned and confessed," reported Linda Blackford of the Herald Leader. "Henry Lynch II, a 21-year-old junior majoring in biosystems engineering, gave police an earful, including that he’d climbed through the building’s air ducts to the ceiling above Cain’s office and dropped down into the room, then unlocked the door and let in his friend, sophomore Troy Kiphuth, 21, who was not in Cain’s class."
Apparently, the students didn’t attempt to go full-on Mission Impossible, as UK Executive Director of Public Relations and Marketing Jay Blanton told the New York Times there was furniture, cabinets, and "other footholds" that could be used to ease the nearly 10-foot drop from the ceiling air ducts to the floor.
Neither police nor UK officials have revealed how or where Lynch got access to the duct. According to authorities, Lynch also managed to swipe another exam from Cain’s office earlier in the semester.
Kiputh and Lynch are scheduled to be arraigned on June 26.
