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A former Golden Apple nominee teacher was behind bars Friday for reportedly battering his pregnant daughter in their Cape Coral garage. John Elias, 45, was arrested Thursday on a charge of domestic violence battery and was being held without bond at Lee County Jail. Records from the Lee County Clerk of Courts reveal three prior domestic violence injunctions in the last three years have been filed against him by two different women. Still, Elias has no prior criminal record.

Elias, a culinary arts teacher at Lee County High Tech North in Cape Coral, earned a Golden Apple nomination for excellence in 1996. Robert Fain, assistant director of the vocational school, said Elias has been an instructor there since the school opened in 1993. According to a report prepared Thursday by Cape police officer Angela Fleming, Elias was arguing with his 18-year-old daughter Jade about her relationship with her boyfriend.

When Jade went out into the garage, her father reportedly told her to leave and she refused. “John then grabbed Jade around her ‘throat and shoved me from the doorway, slamming the door in my face,’ ” Fleming reported, partially in Jade’s own words. “Jade then went back into the garage and John again grabbed her by the throat and shoved her out of the room.

While being shoved, Jade fell over her sister’s white BMX bike.” When she was on the ground, Jade told Flemming her father stood over her and she began hitting him in an attempt to get him away from her. “Jade then told John while on the ground that, ‘it’s a felony to put his hands on a pregnant woman and he told me that it wasn’t and I wouldn’t have the chance to tell anyone,’ ” Fleming reported. Jade got away and called police. A witness backed her story.