KEY POINTS:
A convicted murderer will today be charged with stabbing RSA triple-killer William Bell through the eye.
Dean Joseph Shepherd, who is serving a life sentence at Auckland Prison for murdering his landlady in 2004, is expected to be charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. He will appear in the North Shore District Court next week.
The 46-year-old allegedly plunged a makeshift knife through Bell's eye while the pair were in the recreation room of the maximum-security jail on Monday afternoon.
Bell, who is serving one of the country's longest sentences for the 2001 RSA killings, is still in Auckland City Hospital under police guard. It is understood he was rushed to hospital with bleeding on the brain from his eye injuries.
He is now in a stable condition and is not expected to lose his sight. But it is unclear when he will leave hospital.
The stabbing followed Bell's bragging about his crime and the fact that he was getting "preferential treatment" in D Block, where he and Shepherd are in a segregation unit with up to 22 other inmates.
Shepherd was sentenced last year to minimum non-parole period of 17 1/2 years for the murder of Thai-born New Zealand woman Darunee Aphiromlerk.
Shepherd, who owed his landlady money, was said to have argued with her in her Manurewa flat before tying her up and throwing her into the Whangamarino Stream.
