A Wellesley woman is expected to face manslaughter and assault charges tomorrow for allegedly causing the death of a fetus when she kicked and beat the unborn baby’s mother in Dorchester earlier this year, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley announced.

The Suffolk County Grand Jury on Friday returned indictments charging AYANNA WOODHOUSE (D.O.B. 3/16/85) with manslaughter and aggravated assault and battery for the April 10 incident inside a Neponset Avenue nail salon. Woodhouse is expected to be arraigned on those charges tomorrow morning in the Magistrate’s Session of Suffolk Superior Court.

Woodhouse and the 26-year-old mother were known to each other through the baby’s father, who is Woodhouse’s cousin. Prosecutors allege that Woodhouse, who was living in Dorchester at the time of the incident, encountered the six-months pregnant mother by chance as they got their nails done separately. A dispute erupted between the two, during which Woodhouse allegedly rose to her feet and punched the mother in the face, knocking her to the ground.

Woodhouse allegedly continued to punch and kick the visibly pregnant mother as she lay on the ground trying to defend herself. Several of those blows landed on the woman’s stomach.

The mother was later transported to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where the baby girl was delivered in an emergency Cesarean section. The baby did not survive. After autopsy, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled the cause of her death to be placental abruption – a detachment of the placenta from the uterus – due to maternal trauma.

A homicide charge may be brought in the death of an unborn baby if the fetus was medically viable at the time of the trauma that ended its life. At six months, medical experts agreed, the victim in this case was medically viable.

Assistant District Attorney Leora Joseph led the grand jury investigation that ended with Woodhouse’s indictments. Kathryn DiPerna is the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. The defendant is represented by attorney John Hayes.