A St. Petersburg man was sentenced to 15 years in prison this week for burning a car with a man’s body in the trunk on the Pinellas Trail in Gulfport more than three years ago.

Andy Rozell Bryant, 36, was charged with arson and abuse of a dead body in connection with the 2020 case. He pleaded guilty to those charges in June and was sentenced by Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Philippe Matthey on Monday.

The man in the trunk was Jesus Manuel Tavarez-Soto, 55.

An inconclusive autopsy led investigators with St. Petersburg and Gulfport police to determine that they couldn’t lodge a murder charge in the case. The medical examiner found an “abnormal amount” of fentanyl in Tavarez-Soto’s skull, but also couldn’t rule the cause of death as an overdose, said Juan Manuel Saldivar, the Pinellas prosecutor who handled the case.

Saldivar was on the scene with police on the morning the body was discovered. At the time, he thought it was a murder.

“It’s certainly suspicious, right? We have a body burned in a car in the middle of the night. But, ultimately, I think the police department was right,” he said. “Based on the evidence we have, I do not believe that we could have proven a homicide beyond reasonable doubt.”

In a confession to police, Bryant said he found Tavarez-Soto’s body in the home where he was staying.

Bryant then drove around in Tavarez-Soto’s black Nissan Sentra with his body in the trunk for three days before setting the car on fire, Saldivar said.

On the morning of Sept. 21, 2020, a bicyclist found the Nissan on the Skyway Trail, a paved path that branches off from the Pinellas Trail west of 34th Street S and winds south through Clam Bayou to Skyway Fishing Pier State Park.

Gulfport police arrested Bryant eight months later.

Saldivar said detectives identified Bryant as a suspect soon after the incident but were waiting on warrants and forensic results before they took Bryant into custody.

Cell tower data placed Bryant near the scene at the time of the arson. DNA found on a set of car keys and a lighter thrown into nearby mangroves matched Bryant. He also had burn marks on his legs that police said were consistent with the timeframe of the fire.

“St. Pete and Gulfport had detectives on this that literally just didn’t rest. This was a pretty long and thorough investigation,” Saldivar said. “It really came down to the forensics.”

Arson and abuse of a dead body each bring a maximum sentence of 15 years, which the judge has allowed Bryant to serve concurrently.

“That’s not enough,” Saldivar said. “But that’s what the legislature has attached to that crime.”

Because Bryant has been held in jail since his arrest in 2021, he will serve about 12 years in prison. He could be out sooner, since people incarcerated in Florida are often released on good behavior after serving 85% of their sentence, Saldivar said.

Saldivar, who is prosecuting a similar case involving a body burned in a St. Petersburg dumpster, said he thinks the charge of abuse of a dead body should bring a higher penalty than current Florida law allows.

“This is now the second time I’ve seen this, and they’re sad cases,” he said. “If you want to do an open casket, you can’t really do that now because someone’s decided to mutilate this body.

“You take that away from the loved ones of the people that are involved in this.”