KEY POINTS:
Convicted triple-murderer William Bell is in Auckland City Hospital after being assaulted at Paremoremo Prison.
Bell is serving a 30-year sentence without parole for killing Bill Absalom, Wayne Johnson and Mary Hobson at the Mt Wellington RSA in 2001. He also critically injured Susan Couch.
The Corrections Department's northern regional manager for prison services Warren Cummins said Bell sustained a head injury.
Mr Cummins said the prison unit had been locked down. He said the Corrections Department was treating the matter very seriously and police had been notified.
Mr Cummins said Corrections was working closely with police to ensure there was appropriate security.
The NZ Herald reported earlier today that Bell had got offside with his fellow prisoners by bragging about his crime and the "preferential treatment" he gets because he is serving New Zealand's longest prison sentence.
Bell had reportedly angered his fellow maximum-security inmates by getting more face-to-face contact visits than they did, at which he claimed to eat his way through hampers of food.
One had complained to prison management.
However, a Corrections spokesman denied the prisoner's allegations. Contact visits took place in front of guards and in a room where other prisoner visits were going on. Food was contraband.
One of Bell's family also disputed the prisoner's claim, saying a weekly telephone call to his mother and occasional visits were the only contact he had with the outside world.
The family member said Bell, although allowed, had not come out for the tangi of his younger brother Michael, who had died in a car crash since his conviction. Nor did he go to the tangi for his aunt, Angela Tahana, who was murdered in April last year.
The family member said food could not be taken on visits. "If we could, I would be taking him up some cake or chocolates for Christmas."
- NEWSTALK ZB / NZHERALD
