Tucked away in the woods next to a self-storage facility in New Tampa, a dead body riddled with bullet holes was found last week by police.
The body was heavily decomposed, and pieces of skull lay shattered nearby, Tampa police noted in an arrest report. A lanyard hanging around the man’s neck contained a Florida driver’s license that helped investigators identify him as 35-year-old Andre Dyke.
Investigators learned Dyke had been living out of his red Dodge Charger and discovered with the help of license plate readers that someone else had been driving the car after he died, according to the report. They tracked the Dodge to an apartment complex a few hundred feet north of where his body was found — where police say Andre Aris had recently dumped it.
Police have not released Dyke’s name, but an arrest report made public this week identifies him and lays out the evidence that detectives say links Aris to the murder: Police found bloodstained shoes, shell casings and Dyke’s ID cards among Aris’ possessions, according to the report.
Dyke’s killing is one of a spate of recent shootings that have stirred concern among New Tampa residents. At a town hall meeting Monday night, police Chief Lee Bercaw fielded questions from some of the more than 150 people who packed into the New Tampa Center, reassuring residents that the killings were not random and their community is safe.
On Saturday morning, a patrol officer spotted Dyke’s Dodge parked at the Morgan Creek apartment complex on the 17000 block of Madison Green Drive. Officers in unmarked cars waited there until Aris, 29, walked up to the Dodge, unlocked it and got in.
When officers told Aris to get out of the car and lie on the ground, he refused, and officers used a Taser on him, according to the arrest report.
He was arrested on a charge of resisting an officer without violence. By Monday, police had added charges of first-degree murder with a firearm, grand theft auto and possession of marijuana with the intent to sell.
In an interview with police, Aris told detectives Dyke had given him the Dodge Charger to sell about a week earlier.
Police searched the car and found what appeared to be blood splatter on the ceiling and a bullet hole through the driver’s seat. Inside a black backpack, police found several jars of marijuana, a spent 9mm casing and a bloody semiautomatic Ruger 9mm pistol.
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Explore all your optionsIt had one round in the chamber and an empty magazine with capacity for seven bullets.
Aris told investigators he was renting a storage unit at the Metro Self Storage at 17231 Dona Michelle Drive, which is where Dyke was discovered, as well as a hotel room at a nearby LaQuinta Inn.
Police searched the unit and found a box of ammunition. Seven bullets were missing.
Surveillance video from the storage facility showed Aris walking toward his unit just after 8 a.m. Saturday. Less than 10 minutes later, the video shows Aris leaving with the black backpack police found inside the Dodge Charger containing the gun and marijuana, the report states.
Police also found in the storage unit U.S. Postal Service ID cards in Dyke’s name and bloody socks and shoes.
When investigators searched Aris’ hotel room, they found a white paper bag containing a spent 9mm shell casing and a fired bullet, both covered in blood.
Aris told detectives he found the backpack with the gun and marijuana in the Dodge when Dyke gave it to him. He said he hadn’t had a gun since a Glock pistol was stolen from him two years ago.
When detectives asked why he would buy two cases of ammunition if he didn’t own a gun, Aris said “he knows a lot of people who have firearms,” according to the arrest report.
Aris also denied knowing Dyke’s ID cards were in his storage unit and and told police that Dyke may have left them when he dropped off a tool kit for the car. When police asked Aris about the bloody shoes, he said he found them outside the storage building. He hadn’t seen the blood, Aris told detectives.
“The staining on the shoes appeared very noticeable,” the report reads.
Hillsborough prosecutors have filed a motion asking a judge to keep Aris in jail while his case is pending, arguing he presents a danger to the community. A hearing on the motion is set for Monday.
Nicole Dyke, Andre Dyke’s sister-in-law, said she first met him in the Navy, around the same time she met her husband, Dyke’s younger brother.
“He was outgoing and fun and kind,” she said of Andre Dyke.
Andre Dyke left the military in 2018, according to his sister-in-law. They lost touch soon after and she hadn’t spoken to him in recent years, she said.
