A Texas man has been arrested for allegedly stabbing a contractor who was hired to renovate a home. The contractor’s body was then stuffed in a box and paid to be moved.
“This was a strange one,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
Around 11 a.m. on Friday, deputies responded to a hit-and-run in the 4000 block of Tim Allen Court in Houston. Cops eventually tracked down the driver who fled the scene, and he told them he saw a dead body in a home. He described how a man, later identified as 36-year-old Steven Eberly, paid him to help move boxes and furniture out of the house.
When he went to Eberly’s house to finish the job, he discovered a body in one of the boxes, Gonzalez said.
According to the sheriff, the man fled the scene in Eberly’s truck, with the suspect in the pickup bed attempting to get inside. Eberly fell off as the man crashed the car. Police later arrested Eberly.
Detectives discovered that the contractor had been working on home renovations. KPRC, a local NBC affiliate, interviewed Eberly’s girlfriend, who also lived in the home. She explained that the contractor had been working on a bathroom renovation. The girlfriend informed the TV station that she was at work when the incident occurred.
According to court records, the victim’s name is Luis Silva-Mendez. After transporting Eberly to the hospital for injuries sustained in the crash, officers took him to the Harris County Jail, where he remains without bond.
In addition to murder, the defendant is accused of tampering with evidence. He allegedly attempted to conceal the murder weapon and a cell phone “with the intent to impair its availability as evidence in the investigation,” according to the complaint.
Deputies have yet to reveal the motive for the homicide. Eberly has a court hearing scheduled for Monday.