The sister of a 25-year-old Goshen County man accused of swinging a machete at his sister before being apprehended in Colorado says her brother wasn’t actually trying to hurt her.
Tyger M. Rodriguez surrendered and was arrested Wednesday afternoon without incident in Fort Morgan, Colorado, after he noticed the “significant presence of law enforcement,” says a statement the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office released later that day.
The U.S. Marshals Office Fugitive Unit told the sheriff’s office about a month ago that Rodriguez may be hiding in Morgan County, says the statement, which adds that collaborating law enforcement agents confirmed he was in the area.
'My Brother Would Never'
At about 25 minutes after midnight Feb. 14, Goshen County Sheriff’s Office deputies were sent to an address in Lingle on a report that Rodriguez was “busting out windows” on his vehicle and “acting crazy,” says an affidavit by Goshen County Sheriff’s Deputy Chris Green.
Tyger Rodriguez was busting out his own vehicle windows and asking crazy, his sister Tayte Rodriguez told Cowboy State Daily in a Friday interview. She believed he was breaking his windows with his own hands, she added.
The dispatcher related that Rodriguez had a machete and a hatchet, says the document.
Tyger’s grandmother told law enforcement that Tyger had threatened his sister Tayte with a machete. Tyger’s girlfriend had called Tayte asking for a place to stay, and Tayte allowed the girlfriend to stay at her house, the affidavit says.
The girlfriend and her children went into Tayte’s home. Tyger stood outside the driver’s side door of his vehicle, honked the horn through the window and screamed for his girlfriend to come back outside.
By Tayte’s account, she went outside, shoved Tyger and “got in his face” because it was the middle of the night and she didn’t want him bothering the neighbors.
The siblings have always been close, but have grown even closer in the past year after both their parents died, said Tayte.
Tayte went to slam Tyger’s vehicle door shut and drew close to his face in the process, when at the same moment he pulled a machete out of the back seat, she said.
Here the sister’s account does not characterize the incident the same way the affidavit does.
Tayte described Tyger’s action as pulling the machete out and incidentally swinging it past her neck in the exact moment that she “got in his face.”
She said her brother wasn’t swinging the weapon at her, and that the action didn’t scare her “because he’s my brother: my brother would never intentionally hurt me.”
She confronted him even more after that, trying to get him to leave her house, Tayte added.
The affidavit, conversely, says Tyger swung the machete at Tayte’s throat and that she leaned backward to dodge it.
Tayte conceded that she had to lean backward, but maintained that Tyger wasn’t trying to swing the weapon at her.
The document says she turned to go back into the house and Tyger approached the house behind her, swung the machete at the siding and cut through the metal paneling.
It was around then that he started beating his own car windows, said Tayte.
“He just told me, ‘I’m gonna go see our mom,’” Tayte recalled. “Our mom is dead. And (he said) that he loved me, and loved my son.”
The siblings’ grandmother called police to report Tyger’s “crazy” behavior. When law enforcement arrived, Tayte told them to find her brother because she was worried he was about to hurt himself.
Almost Four Days Later
Nearly four days later, Feb. 17 at 9:34 p.m., Goshen County Sheriff’s Deputy Landen Sanders was sent to a hospital in Torrington for a report of an assault, says an affidavit Sanders wrote.
The deputy found a man bleeding from the head in the emergency room, the affidavit says.
The man said he was hit in the head with a hammer. A hospital staffer said it looked as though the man had been struck more than once in the head, added Sanders.
The man in the hospital told the deputy that a white truck had been driving quickly up and down his street, and he went to confront the people in it.
There were two people in the truck: Tyger and another person the man didn’t know. The conversation got heated, the man said, according to the document.
The man went to talk to another person at the situation, and while he was at that person’s home, Tyger and the second truck occupant approached them from behind, Sanders wrote.
The man turned around and “walked through them” — then he felt a hammer strike his head, he told the deputy. When he turned, he saw Tyger standing near him, holding a hammer, the affidavit says.
The man started losing consciousness. Though medical professionals concluded he was hit more than once, the man only remembers being hit one time, Sanders added.
Cowboy State Daily was unable to find contact information for the alleged victim by publication time.
Tayte said she believes her brother was at his home in Torrington during the intervening three-plus days.
The Goshen County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately return a Friday-morning voicemail request for comment.
Two Counts
Goshen County Attorney Eric Boyer charged Tyger Rodriguez on Feb. 19 with two counts of aggravated assault — one on the claim that he swung a machete at Tayte and another based on the reported hammer attack.
Each is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $10,000 in fines.
But authorities did not have Tyger in custody, and received a judge-signed warrant for his arrest.
Meanwhile, Boyer filed a petition Feb. 26 for the court to revoke Tyger’s probation on a 2020 felony-level unlawful entry case for which he’d been sentenced to the state’s youthful offender “boot camp.”
Tyger was originally sentenced to complete a three-to-five-year prison term for that charge, which was based on evidence he hid in a man’s home and beat him up, but a judge reduced Tyger’s sentence to probation after the man completed boot camp.
That is a common outcome for youthful offenders sentenced to the boot camp program in Wyoming.
An affidavit by Tyger’s probation agent lists the two assault cases, but also says Tyger was charged Feb. 3 with criminal trespass, theft, receiving stolen property and criminal mischief in Scottsbluff County, Nebraska.
Tayte said her concern is for Tyger to receive mental health help.
“People will think what they want to think. They can make him out to be whatever they want in their minds, but they never knew the true him and I do,” she said. You can villainize him you can make him the devil in your mind but that’s not who he is.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
