Citizen of the Week! The Sword-Wielding Cholo

​One day in April 2006 in the City of Orange, wanted criminal Tyrone "Thumper" Christopher Rye got high on marijuana and stood at a street intersection holding a sword.

What Rye--an uneducated, convicted felon tied to the Orange Varrio Cypress gang and the Mexican Mafia--was planning may never be known.

But people were rightly suspicious and when a police officer approached, Rye fled, dropped the sword, jumped over a fence and disappeared, according to court records.

He eventually entered an occupied residence to hide. While in the horrified person's home, Rye drank water, grabbed a pear, demanded a shirt and fled. Cops captured him. He gave a false name and, among other things, told police: "Fuck you," before stating that he wouldn't talk after his Miranda warning.

But he continued to speak.

Here is one of his recorded statements: "Ey, who's, who, who, who's, who, who's, who doesn't play those games here? Thumper from Orange County . . . What's up? Ey, fools get somebody from, that's up with our stuff on it . . ."

Exactly. Can we get some answers? Who's? Who? Who? Who's? Who? Who's? Who?

Who is on third.

​The 37-year-old Rye contested his 2010 conviction and a 20-year prison sentence. He didn't think his statements to police should have been shared with his jury and it was unfair that his theft of a pear constituted robbery after he invaded a home while fleeing police.

In a Jan. 10 decision, a California Court of Appeal based in Santa Ana determined in an opinion written by Justice Raymond Ikola that none of Rye's complaints were valid.

Rye became a hoodlum at the age of nine, never attended middle or high school and has been arrested at least 21 times during a 25-year-period, according to court records.


--R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly