The killer of murdered schoolboy Daniel Morcombe has been taken to hospital after another prisoner threw boiling water over him.
Brett Peter Cowan has been taken to Royal Brisbane hospital with burns to his head, chest and legs after the attack at Wolston correctional centre on Friday morning.
A corrective services spokesman said the 46-year-old was injured about 9.15am and was “conscious and lucid” when an ambulance arrived.
A Queensland ambulance spokeswoman said he was in a stable condition.
Police are interviewing another prisoner in relation to the attack and the matter is being investigated by both the Queensland police service’s corrective services investigation unit and the office of the chief inspector.
The Courier Mail reports that Cowan was removed from a protective cell and placed in a more general unit of this prison earlier this year.
His lawyer, Tim Meehan, of Bosscher Lawyers, has suggested that the attack is evidence of failure of duty of care on the part of prison management.
“I understand that there’s an awful lot of ill feeling towards him but vigilante justice is something that has never been condoned by the courts,” he told the newspaper.
“He is in jail as punishment for his crime and it’s not for others who are in jail – serving punishment for their crimes – to serve out summary justice.”
Cowan is serving a life sentence for the 2003 murder of 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe, whom he abducted on the Sunshine Coast in 2003.
He was arrested in Perth in August 2011 as a result of a covert police operation.
The schoolboy’s remains were later discovered 40km from the site of his disappearance, at a property in the Glass House mountains, north of Brisbane.
Cowan was convicted in 2014. The high court rejected down his appeal in March this year.
