CLEVELAND (Reuters) - A teenager who escaped from a north-western Ohio prison with another inmate on Thursday while serving a life sentence for shooting three students to death at a Cleveland-area high school in 2012 has been taken back into custody, police said.

T.J. Lane, 19, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole last year for the attack at Chardon High School near Cleveland, escaped with fellow inmate Clifford Opperud, 45, from the Allen Oakwood Correctional Institution in Lima, Ohio, the local police department said in a Facebook message.

A dispatcher with the Ohio State Highway Patrol confirmed early on Friday morning that Lane had been taken back into custody, but declined to provide additional information.

Lane and Opperud, who is serving a sentence for aggravated robbery, escaped at about 7.40pm and were said to be wearing blue prison uniforms, the police said. The circumstances of their escape from the facility with more than 1,600 inmates were not immediately known.