A man has been arrested in connection with the violent beating of a woman who was celebrating her bachelorette weekend in Dallas last week.
Canada Rinaldi, 27, was visiting Texas with friends when a man she did not know attacked her in the early-morning hours on March 23, police said. The Dallas Police Department identified the suspect as Trevon Woodards.
Police said Woodards was arrested on Friday by the Bedford Police Department, a jurisdiction in the suburbs outside of Dallas.
Rinaldi told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth that she and her friends came down from Oklahoma to host her bachelorette weekend in the city. Her wedding is in a month, and Rinaldi now has a concussion, a broken nose, three broken teeth and eight stitches on her face.
Kelly Peralta, an aunt of Rinaldi’s fiancé, told NBC DFW that the group was leaving a club and walking across the street to an Uber when they were blindsided by a man.
“We started walking across the street to get into the Uber, and that’s when he came from behind and he punched Canada, and she went straight down, and I turned to push him away, and that’s when he got me,” Peralta said.
Peralta had a black eye following the assault.
A GoFundMe for Rinaldi said the bride-to-be has more than $10,000 in medical expenses between the cost of the ambulance and the hospital stay. The crowdfunding campaign raised nearly $20,000 by Sunday.
“We are so incredibly grateful for every single donation, share, and kind message,” her friend wrote on the page. “Your generosity and support mean the world and have brought so much comfort during such a difficult time.”
Court records for Woodards in the case were not immediately available. Inmate records show he remained in custody as of Sunday afternoon and it is unclear if he has retained an attorney.
Dallas County court records show Woodards was charged with felony assault in September 2021, but pleaded guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge.
A police report filed in the 2021 case said that Woodards had interfered with the arrest of an individual with felony warrants, demanding to “know what was going on.” He was told by officers to back up three times before Woodards grabbed an officer’s shirt and head and “began to eye gouge” the officer, the report said.
Officers shocked Woodards with a stun gun and arrested him, the police report said.
He was sentenced to a year of community service and appears to have spent 10 days in jail for a violation on his probation in February, according to court records.
