WELLINGTON ? Two men who escaped from an Oklahoma prison were seen Tuesday morning in businesses near Arkansas City, about 25 miles from where a van they stole was recovered, a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper said.

Convicted killer Aaron Olsen, 39, and convicted rapist Pharon Johnson, 49, were seen about 7:30 a.m. at a convenience store and restaurant just east of Arkansas City, trooper David Heim said.

The two escaped from the Joseph Harp Correctional Center in Lexington on Sunday. They kidnapped a woman in the prison parking lot and stole her van before releasing her unharmed in a ditch in Oklahoma City, police said.

“These men have killed, raped and kidnapped people before, and there is no reason to believe they wouldn’t do it again,” Heim said.

The van the inmates stole was recovered Tuesday about four miles north of the Oklahoma-Kansas border along Interstate 35 near Wellington.

The van apparently was left along the Kansas Turnpike sometime after 6 a.m., said Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. Pete Norwood. Authorities don’t know if the two men were on foot, managed to get a ride or stole another vehicle.

“The lights were still on and the keys were still in the ignition, so we believe they just ran out of gas and pulled it over to the side,” Norwood said.

Nearby schools were locked down, authorities said.

Kansas authorities said they used canine units, a Wichita police helicopter and a Kansas Highway Patrol plane without success Tuesday morning.

The van was discovered by a trooper at 8:09 a.m. on the exit ramp to U.S. 166, said Capt. Mark Convoy of the Kansas Turnpike Authority. The trooper ran the license plate on the abandoned minivan, which had not been there when he drove by at 6:13 a.m.

The area where the van was abandoned is sparsely populated, with only a gas station and a hotel nearby.

Stacy Richards, 30, of Tulsa, told police she was visiting her boyfriend at the Joseph Harp Correctional Center on Sunday when two men matching the descriptions of Johnson and Olsen approached her as she prepared to leave.

She told police the two men vowed they would not be taken alive.

After driving around for several hours, Richards said the men duct-taped her hands and mouth and placed her in a ditch near Hefner Road in northeast Oklahoma City.

She managed to free herself, flagged down a motorist and police were called. Richards was not injured.