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Man Killed In St. Pete Last Week Was Sex Offender

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Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: January 27, 2009

Carmen Tungate

MANATEE COUNTY - A convicted killer and sex offender from Manatee County was fatally shot in St. Petersburg last week.

Carmen Tungate, 40, died early Friday morning at the hospital after he was shot around 8 p.m. Thursday while driving, St. Petersburg Police said.

He was found slumped over in the van after crashing into a parked car. There are no suspects in the shooting.

In 1989, Tungate pleaded no contest to second-degree murder in the 1988 killing of his former boss at a Bradenton Econo Lodge.

Tungate, who was 19 at the time, and another man lured owner Ballpuram Umakanthan into a motel room, where Tungate bashed his head with a pipe and held him down while the other man strangled him, according to court records.

He was sentenced to 30 years in prison but was released in 1999 because of a Supreme Court decision, affording some prisoners eligibility in a discontinued early release program.

In 2004, he was arrested on charges that he exposed himself to nearly a dozen teenage boys in Sarasota.

Tungate was released from Polk Correctional Institute in June 2008 after serving nearly three years on those lewd and lascivious charges, and he was deemed a sex offender.

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