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Friday, April 25, 2025

Rising local actor to serve jail time in UK for strangling girlfriend

by

Rhondor Dowlat
69 days ago
20250215
Trini actor Renaldo Frederick outside Southwark Crown Court in England

Trini actor Renaldo Frederick outside Southwark Crown Court in England

A Trinida­di­an ac­tor’s dream to study at Lon­don’s pres­ti­gious Roy­al Acad­e­my of Dra­mat­ic Art (RA­DA) has end­ed af­ter he was sen­tenced to 18 months in prison for stran­gling his girl­friend.

Re­nal­do “Red” Fred­er­ick, 31, once a ris­ing star in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s film and the­atre in­dus­try, was con­vict­ed on Feb­ru­ary 10 at South­wark Crown Court of in­ten­tion­al stran­gu­la­tion and crim­i­nal dam­age to the vic­tim’s phone.

Fred­er­ick, who moved to the UK af­ter be­ing one of on­ly 16 stu­dents world­wide ac­cept­ed in­to RA­DA’s Mas­ter of Arts The­atre Lab pro­gramme, asked the vic­tim: “Do you want to die a lit­tle bit?” be­fore ap­ply­ing what she de­scribed as “ten out of ten” pres­sure to her neck, cut­ting off her breath­ing.

Judge Justin Cole, ac­cord­ing to free­lance court jour­nal­ist Tony Palmer, in hand­ing down the cus­to­di­al sen­tence, said: “You put her in a tight head­lock, and she de­scribed be­ing com­plete­ly un­able to breathe. You loos­ened your grip but kept her in a head­lock for an hour. When she tried to free her­self, you tight­ened your grip.”

The in­ci­dent oc­curred on June 1, 2023, at the woman’s West­min­ster home. A month lat­er, on Ju­ly 15, Fred­er­ick smashed her mo­bile phone.

“You told her if she con­tin­ued to strug­gle, you would put her to sleep,” the judge added. “The next morn­ing, you told her she had on­ly stopped breath­ing for four sec­onds and next time it would be five sec­onds. This was high­ly dan­ger­ous and an act of con­trol.”

Fred­er­ick, who was re­sid­ing at his spon­sor’s home in Sit­ting­bourne, Kent, de­nied the charges and claimed it was a prank that went too far. His lawyer, Bar­ry Ko­gan, ar­gued for a sus­pend­ed sen­tence, cit­ing Fred­er­ick’s re­morse and lack of work op­por­tu­ni­ties while on bail.

How­ev­er, Judge Cole dis­agreed, not­ing Fred­er­ick’s “con­tin­ued de­nial” of the of­fence and the dan­ger­ous na­ture of the act. Fred­er­ick, who has a pri­or con­vic­tion for as­sault­ing a night­club se­cu­ri­ty guard in April 2023, will be de­port­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go up­on com­plet­ing his sen­tence as his visa has ex­pired.

In a 2014 Trinidad Guardian fea­ture, Fred­er­ick spoke pas­sion­ate­ly about his break­through role as Gold­teeth, a de­fi­ant pan­man, in the docu-dra­ma Pan! Our Mu­sic Odyssey.

At the time, the then-21-year-old al­so starred as David, a rook­ie po­lice of­fi­cer in Fly­ing the Coup, which won the Peo­ple’s Choice Award for Best Short Film at the 2014 Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val.

Fred­er­ick’s ac­cep­tance to RA­DA had been a mo­ment of pride, with the ac­tor host­ing a fundrais­ing event called “in­cRED­i­ble” to cov­er tu­ition costs.

Ef­forts to reach Fred­er­ick's at­tor­ney Bar­ry Ko­gan for fur­ther com­ment proved fu­tile.


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