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Manslaughter charge expected in death of fetus

E-mail|Link July 11, 2010 03:26 PM

By Alex Katz, Globe Correspondent

A Wellesley woman is expected to be charged with manslaughter Monday for allegedly causing the death of a pregnant woman's unborn fetus after beating the woman in a Dorchester nail salon in April, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said in a statement.

On Friday, the Suffolk County Grand Jury returned indictments charging Ayanna Woodhouse, 25, with manslaughter and aggravated assault and battery for the April 10 incident at Tulip Nail salon. Woodhouse is expected to be arraigned on those charges, according to a statement from Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk County district attorney’s office.

Woodhouse and the 26-year-old mother, whose name was not released, knew each other through the unborn fetus’s father, who is Woodhouse's cousin, according to the statement.

Prosecutors allege the two encountered each other at the salon by chance and then began to argue. Wark said in a phone interview that the dispute was over a prior incident, but he could not get into further details.

Woodhouse allegedly punched the mother in the face and continued to beat and kick her as she tried to defend herself while lying on the ground.

The mother was later transported to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where doctors delivered a baby girl in an emergency caesarean section. The baby did not survive.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined the cause of death to be trauma-induced placental abruption, which is a detachment of the placenta from the uterus.

The case raises the long-debated question of when a fetus becomes viable.

According to the district attorney’s office, a homicide charge may be brought in the death of an unborn fetus if it was medically viable at the time of the trauma that ended its life. Medical experts who testified to the grand jury determined the fetus in this case was medically viable.