Kentucky HS students witnessed Louvre jewel heist worth $100M in Paris

By now, you’ve probably heard about the Louvre heist in Paris, thieves taking less than eight minutes to steal $102 million worth of crown jewels — priceless, when considering historical significance — in the most famous museum in the world, and in broad daylight, no less.

But what if I told you that a Kentucky high school somehow got caught up in the madness?

Eight pieces of jewelry were stolen — including a diamond and pearl tiara and diamond brooch worn by Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, a sapphire and diamond set worn by Queen Hortense and Queen Marie-Amélie and an emerald necklace and earrings Napoleon gave his second wife, Marie-Louise of Austria, among others — forcing the museum that hosts 30,000 visitors a day and brought in nine million people in 2024 to abruptly close. Thieves disguised as museum workers used a basket lift to climb the building and break into a window, smashed the display cases and left on motorcycles. The manhunt continues with 100 investigators chasing down the prized gems and the four people who took them, a race against the clock before they’re melted down to sell and history is gone forever.

There for it all? A class from Trinity High School of Whitesville, Kentucky, who was not only in Paris at the time for a school trip to Europe, but inside the Louvre during the heist. What are the odds? Their reaction was about what you’d expect.

WFIE caught up with Trinity HS students and the principal after the incident, explaining that they were about to walk into the Gallery of Apollo — the scene of the crime — when they heard chainsaws and saw a crowd running in the opposite direction. Unsurprisingly, they followed.

“Took a deep breath, and I just started running,” one student told WFIE. “I honestly didn’t really know what I was running to, but in my head, I was just, ‘I need to get out of here,’ and I was just running.”

“We kept instructing them, we have to stay close,” school principal Emily Hernandez added. “Students are faster than us at times and I would say, ‘Don’t get so far ahead, we have to stay together. Whatever we do, all of us have to stay together.’ … Obviously there was a danger. Anybody that will come in with masks and chainsaws, you don’t know what they’ll do. … They were going for (the jewels) and not people. So that was good, but we didn’t know that until we were out of the building.”

The school addressed the incident on its Facebook page while sharing some photos from the trip — including several from the Louvre.

“The last day of Paris was eventful for sure!” they wrote. “We started with prayer and breakfast, and then headed out. We went to the Louvre and I believe we all know, at this point, how that ended…thank God we are safe and what are the odds we would be about to enter the Apollo Gallery when a robbery would take place. Again, our students followed our instruction and a little over an hour later we were able to exit. We continued as planned the remainder of the day!”

“I think it’s a great story to be able to tell people, that you were at the Louvre when it got robbed,” one Trinity student told WFIE.

“This’ll be a story I’ll probably tell my whole life,” another added. “And apparently this hasn’t happened for a while, and the fact that we were there, it’s just kind of mind-blowing.”

Hang that story in the Louvre. Glad everyone made it out and back home safe and sound.