Ayanna Woodhouse, 26, of Wellesley admitted beating the other woman, then six months pregnant, on April 10, 2010, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Prosecutors say the two - who knew each other through the child's father - got into an argument that turned physical at the Tulips Nail Salon on Neponset Avenue. According to the DA's office, "Woodhouse rose to her feet and punched the mother in the face, knocking her to the ground. She continued to beat the visibly pregnant mother, who lay on the ground trying to defend herself. Several of the 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."

Prosecutors had sought four to five years in state prison; Suffolk Superior Court Judge Carol Ball sentenced Woodhouse to two years in a county jail followed by three years of probation.

In a victim impact statement, the mother said, "Why did this have to happen? And how can you love and miss someone so much who you never even met? My daughter is in a better place now, but I always thought that better place would be right here with me."

In Massachusetts, somebody can be charged with a homicide for the death of a fetus if the unborn baby was medically viable at the time.