Inset: Steven Eberly (Harris County Sheriff). Background: Home in Houston, Texas, where Eberly killed a contractor working on renovations (KPRC).
A man in Texas is behind bars after he allegedly stabbed a contractor to death who was hired to do renovations on a home, then he stuffed his body in a box and paid a person to move it.
“This was a strange one,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
According to Gonzalez, deputies responded around 11 a.m. Friday to a home in the 4000 block of Tim Allen Court in Houston for a hit-and-run. Cops later tracked down the driver who fled the scene and he told them he saw a dead body at a home. He explained how a man, later identified as 36-year-old Steven Eberly, paid him to help move boxes and furniture from the home.
When he went to Eberly’s home to complete the work, he found a body in one of those boxes, Gonzalez said.
The man fled the scene in Eberly’s truck — with the suspect in the bed of the pickup trying to get inside, the sheriff said. Eberly fell off as the man crashed the vehicle. Cops later arrested Eberly.
This was a strange one: on Friday, 5/16/25, at abt 11am, @HCSOTexas patrol units responded to multiple calls in the vicinity of the 4000 blk of Tim Allen Ct. Initial calls were reporting a vehicle crash where the striking vehicle had fled the scene.
Also being recv’d, was a… pic.twitter.com/0c8ySFNftG
— Ed Gonzalez (@SheriffEd_HCSO) May 18, 2025
Detectives determined the contractor had been working on home renovations. Local NBC affiliate KPRC interviewed Eberly’s girlfriend who also lived in the home in question. She said the contractor had been working on a bathroom renovation. The girlfriend told the TV station she was at work when the incident occurred.
Court records identified the victim as Luis Silva-Mendez. After taking Eberly to the hospital for the injuries in the crash, cops took him to the Harris County Jail where he remains without bond. In addition to murder, the defendant stands accused of tampering with evidence. He allegedly tried to conceal the murder weapon and a cell phone “with intent to impair its availability as evidence in the investigation,” a complaint said.
Deputies have yet to reveal a motive for the homicide. Eberly has a court hearing scheduled for Monday.
