Brooksville man arrested in alleged domestic strangulation attack

A Brooksville apartment fight ended with Frederick Ivan Thompson jailed on felony domestic battery by strangulation, false imprisonment, domestic battery and child abuse charges after deputies said he attacked his girlfriend inside Tanglewood Apartments and then turned on her daughter when she tried to intervene. Thompson, 35, a Hernando County resident born in the Bahamas, was booked June 20.

According to the arrest affidavit summarized in the report, the confrontation started over a cellphone Thompson was using while talking to another woman. When the victim tried to take the phone back, deputies said Thompson punched her in the face and kept striking her in the head and face. Investigators said he also placed his hands around her head and neck while punching her, then moved the assault from the kitchen into a bedroom and blocked her from leaving.

Deputies documented redness to the victim’s face and neck, lacerations to her nose and behind her ear, a cut on her thigh and visible marks around her neck that were consistent with strangulation. The victim’s daughter told deputies she heard the disturbance, walked into the room and saw Thompson punching her mother. When she tried to break up the fight, the affidavit said Thompson kicked her in the chest, struck her and pushed both females into a closet wall, making it hard for her to breathe.

A neighbor who heard the screaming also saw part of the episode and told deputies to let the woman leave, then watched the victim run into the neighbor’s apartment for safety. The scene points to how quickly a domestic call can become a multi-victim case, with a child pulled directly into the violence and a nearby resident forced to step in before deputies arrived.

Thompson’s current booking also revived concerns about prior violence. R News linked the arrest to a 2019 domestic-violence case in which he was arrested on aggravated assault, false imprisonment, domestic battery and witness-tampering charges. Hernando County Sheriff’s Office arrest records list the June 20 booking and the same four offenses, but the agency says its online booking data are preliminary and should not be used to determine a person’s actual criminal record or final case outcome.

The case now moves into the county court process, where prosecutors will decide how to proceed and any bond or protection conditions will be handled. For the victim and her daughter, the most immediate question is whether the legal system can keep pace with a case that already showed signs of repeated domestic violence.