Roommate stabbed woman 28 times after fight over cat, records say

By Mycah Hatfield

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    HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — A 40-year-old man, Chester Lamar Grant, has been charged in his roommate’s death after police say a woman was found stabbed inside their southeast Houston apartment last month.

The Houston Police Department said just before 4 p.m. on April 26, officers were called to an apartment complex on Goforth Street for a welfare check. When officers arrived and knocked on the door, no one responded, and they found blood on the back patio.

A woman, identified as 23-year-old Elizabeth Odunsi, was found on the kitchen floor with multiple stab wounds and pronounced dead at the scene.

Police said Grant was discovered in a bedroom with at least one stab wound and was taken to the hospital in critical condition. It is unclear how he was wounded, but investigators believe there is a chance it was self-inflicted.

Investigators later identified Grant as the victim’s roommate and the suspect in this case. He was arrested last week, on Friday, May 2, and has been charged with murder.

The two lived in an offsite student housing quadplex. Odunsi was set to graduate days after her death from Texas Women’s University with a nursing degree, according to the university’s website. Grant was a student at Fordham University, according to a magistrate.

In probable cause court, a magistrate said the two were in a fight over Grant’s cat and referred to it as a “brutal murder.”

Houston police confirm they were called out to the quadplex several times in the past. People who live in the building said officers were on site for a fight between the roommates hours before Odunsi’s body was discovered.

It came out in court that Grant has been arrested and convicted several times in Washington state for domestic violence and most recently in 2023 for violating a protective order.

Individual rooms are rented out in the building on Goforth by “For a Place to Live” and roommates are paired at random. On the company’s website, it says, “We don’t use any criteria to match roommate compatibility to place roommates.”

The company said they run background checks on applicants.

“If the applicant has questionable items in the background that we think are not a fit for a shared house, we asked that they get a private unit,” the website says.

ABC13 reached out to For a Place to Live to find out if they were aware of Grant’s past arrests and if they knew about the conflict between Odunsi and Grant. They did not return the call.

Grant’s bond was set at $500,000.

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