“The investigation showed that the only true victim in this was the unborn baby,” he said then. “It was the mother of the child who initiated and continued the fight.”

Ms. Jones was five months pregnant and working at a company in Pleasant Grove that sells fuel for fires, when she got involved in an altercation in the parking lot of the Dollar General store.

The fight stemmed from a long-simmering feud with a female co-worker, Ebony Jemison, 23, over a man who worked at the same company. Ms. Jones spotted Ms. Jemison in the parking lot and started a fight with her, according to a law enforcement officer with direct knowledge of the investigation who did not want to be identified. By the officer’s account, Ms. Jones was winning the fight and had Ms. Jemison pinned in her car.

After taking repeated blows, the officer said, Ms. Jemison reached for a gun, and fired point blank into Ms. Jones’s stomach. Ms. Jones was driven to a hospital in a car that apparently broke down on the way. Paramedics eventually arrived and took her to a hospital, but her fetus — struck by a bullet — died.

This account of the fight differs from others that have been offered in recent days, which have suggested that Ms. Jemison fired a warning shot at the ground and the bullet bounced up and hit Ms. Jones in the belly.

Pleasant Grove officers initially arrested Ms. Jemison. But the grand jury declined to indict her, concluding that she had acted in self-defense. It then took the unusual step of indicting Ms. Jones, for “initiating a fight knowing she was five months pregnant.” The police were surprised by the decision, according to the law enforcement officer, but agreed with its logic.

Reached by phone on Friday night, the forewoman of the grand jury, Mischelle Cagle, said she was unaware of the national furor. She declined to discuss the details of the case, but said that it was one of hundreds of cases the jury had heard over the course of a few days. She said the jurors did their best to probe for the truth and follow Alabama law.