Pregnant woman protects baby with wood slab

FORT WALTON BEACH - The argument escalated quickly: She said he made punching motions at her pregnant belly and he said she whacked him in the back of the head with a 4-foot slab of wood.

Both face felony charges.

It began at about noon Sunday, when 24-year-old Jason Miles and his 23-year-old girlfriend Brittany Bragg, both of Cove Drive, were arguing about another woman's phone number in his cell phone, according to the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office.

Bragg said Miles turned over her chair, throwing her to the ground. Then he emptied her purse into her face, pushed her head into the floor and "made punching motions toward her stomach stating he was going to kill the baby," a deputy wrote in his arrest report. He also choked her, she said.

Miles said he was asleep in bed when Bragg struck first, hitting him in the back of the head with a 4-foot-long 4-by-4 piece of hard wood.

Deputies interviewed him at Fort Walton Beach Medical Center, where he was removed from a backboard and neck brace before a CAT scan confirmed his injuries.

Bragg was charged with aggravated domestic battery. Miles was charged with aggravated domestic battery on a victim known to be pregnant.