Man shot, killed while driving van

ST. PETERSBURG — Police are investigating the slaying of a man who was shot Thursday night while driving his van in the Cromwell Heights neighborhood.

Police say 40-year-old Carmen Tungate of 2500 54th Ave. N, Lot 283, was driving his white work van about 8 p.m. in the 2400 block of Highland Street S, when a bullet hit him in the upper torso.

Tungate lost control of the van and crashed into a parked silver Suzuki. Police found Tungate slumped over in his seat.

An ambulance took him to Bayfront Medical Center, and he died just after midnight Thursday.

No suspects have been identified. Police are investigating.

Tungate, a registered sex offender, had a lengthy criminal record and became one of Manatee County's most infamous criminals for strangling his former boss, Ballapuram Umakanthan, at a Brandenton motel in 1988. Tungate was 19 at the time.

He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 30 years in 1989, but was released in 1999 because of a state Supreme Court ruling that granted early release to a small group of offenders.

"He ended up spending 10 years on a murder charge, which was insane," said Dave Bristow, public information officer for the Manatee County Sheriff's Department.

Bristow said he remembers Tungate's name and face well. At the time of Tungate's release, then-Sheriff Charlie Wells opposed the court's decision and called it "legal escape," according to newspaper accounts.

Once out, Tungate picked up a string of arrests for sexual offenses, including exposing himself to several teenage boys in Sarasota in 2004.

"That wasn't a real shock to us," Bristow said.

But despite his past, Tungate was turning his life around, said his mother, Anna Hardin.

"He wasn't a saint, but he was a good person," Hardin said Friday from her Bradenton home. "There's always two sides to a coin."

When Tungate got out of prison, Hardin said, he got a job working for an air conditioning company.

He lived in Palace Mobile Home Park, a community that has become a magnet for the many of the county's sex offenders, who have access to counseling.

Turngate decided to go back to school, and was taking online college courses. He started attending Calvary Chapel of St. Petersburg, and even got his mother to go a couple of times.

"He was a good person with a problem," Hardin said. "He was trying to better himself."

Hardin said she last saw her son in the early evening hours Thursday. He left her Bradenton home, telling a nephew he was going to the library.

"Whoever did it, I'm not looking for revenge," his mother said. "We all pay for our sins."