Escaped high school shooter recaptured after five-hour manhunt

An American teenager serving a life sentence for shooting three of his classmates in 2012 has been caught about 90 metres from the Ohio prison fence he scaled to escape just hours earlier. T.J. Lane, 19, who was sentenced to life without parole last year in the attack at Chardon High School, escaped on Thursday with two other inmates from the Allen Oakwood Correctional Institution in Lima, in northwestern Ohio. Lane was found early Friday in a wooded area close to the prison, officials said. The other two inmates also were recaptured. It is not clear why Lane was placed at the facility, which houses mostly lower risk prisoners who require minimum security.

We are going to have to sit down and take a look at it and determine if Allen Oakwood was the place he was supposed to be.

Warder Kevin Jones

All three inmates have now been transferred to a “supermax” facility, used for inmates who pose the highest security risk. Lane was arrested shortly after the February 2012 attack and confessed to firing a .22-caliber pistol at students in the school cafeteria, killing Demetrius Hewlin, 16, Russell King Jr., 17, and Daniel Parmertor, 16. Three others were wounded, including one who was paralysed. At his sentencing last year, Lane wore a T-shirt with “killer” scrawled on it, smirked at his victims’ families and made obscene gesture in court. He was sentenced to three life terms for the murders and 37 years for wounding the other students.

Americas TJ Lane