A south Alabama family is seeking answers about what happened to their loved one inside an Alabama prison, leaving him hospitalized for more than a week.

Barbara Anne Turner said she found out that her nephew Klifton Adam Bond was hospitalized, not from prison officials, but from another man locked up at Donaldson Correctional Facility, a state prison near Birmingham. The man told her that another inmate attacked her nephew, stabbed him and beat him in the head with a pipe on Nov. 6. Turner told Bond’s mother, Rebecca Crafton.

“I called the prison all night and his mother called the prison all night, and then they said we’d have to call the warden in the morning,” Turner said. “Then when we called in the morning, they said she was in a meeting.”

Crafton said warden finally called back late on Tuesday but still wouldn’t provide many details about the attack or Bond’s condition. She did confirm he was at UAB Hospital.

Bond’s family believes he was transported to UAB to undergo brain surgery, but they say they have not been allowed to speak to him or his doctors.

Crafton sent a letter to wardens at Donaldson and leaders of the Alabama Department of Corrections last week seeking more information about how her son ended up at UAB Hospital.

“Sadly, this is not the first time he has been attacked there,”, said Turner said. “He is at UAB in an ICU trauma unit after having to have brain surgery. I hold the warden and guards responsible for not protecting him as they knew the danger he was in.”

Turner said Bond had been victimized by prison gangs who use violence and intimidation to extort families. He had been beaten before in an incident that left him with three broken ribs, a dislocated knee, and a fractured eye socket. Bond refused to identify his attackers out of fear they might retaliate and kill him, Turner said.

The family paid extortion money to try to keep him safe, Turner said. Although they knew Bonds was in danger, the family said prison staff did nothing to help protect him.

“When did the prisoners begin running the prisons?” she said.

Bond is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiracy to commit burglary. Police arrested him and another conspirator in 2017 after a home invasion turned deadly in Foley. The homeowner shot and killed a man who was using a pickaxe to break into his house and Bond later pleaded guilty to helping plan the robbery.

The Alabama Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to requests for comment from AL.com.

Alabama prisons have been under fire for violent conditions for years. Officials from the U.S. Department of Justice wrote a report in 2019 which found conditions likely violated inmates’ Constitutional rights. Overcrowding and understaffing created conditions where violence and extortion became unchecked and correctional officers frequently used excessive force.

The report found that correctional officers failed to protect inmates even when they suspected the threat of violence. Crafton said the man who attacked her son had a long, violent criminal history and should have been separated from other inmates.

After learning from another inmate about the attack on her son, Crafton said it took another day to get information from Alabama Department of Corrections.

“I know where he is,” Crafton said. “I don’t know what is going on with his treatment or condition. Starting on Monday, they gave us the runaround.”

After the family retained a lawyer, they began to get some answers about Bond. But they still feel shut out from treatment decisions and don’t feel they can trust the information coming from ADOC without speaking to doctors.

Family members do not believe they should be excluded from decisions about Bond’s care. They have reached out to several officials for assistance and announced a press conference for Nov. 13 as part of the push to get more input about Bond’s medical treatment.

In her letter, Crafton said prison officials are trying to transfer her son back to Donaldson against the advice of doctors.

“I am asking that you keep him at UAB hospital so long as his doctors think it’s necessary to keep him there,” she wrote.

Crafton and Turner said they are worried about what might happen to Bond if he is transferred back to Donaldson.

“At one point they were talking about transferring him back,” Turner said. “I just worry that the next time he could be killed.”