A Butler County jury convicted a Clay Township man Thursday, Oct. 12, of five felony charges filed by state police in 2020 for removing the engine from a minivan he rented and installing it into a larger cargo van he had purchased.

Steven M. Ewida, 35, was found guilty by a jury consisting of seven men and five women after they deliberated for about two hours on the third day of his trial in Common Pleas Court. Judge Maura Palumbi scheduled sentencing for Dec. 12.

The charges were filed by troopers who are part of the Western Regional Auto Theft Task Force. They said Ewida rented a 2019 Dodge Caravan on April 30, 2020, removed the engine, ground off the engine serial number and placed it in a 2016 Dodge ProMaster van that he bought before returning the Caravan with the ProMaster’s engine to Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Monroeville on May 7.

A Dodge dealership in Monroeville discovered the Caravan didn’t have its original engine on May 18 after Enterprise had it towed there to find out why it wasn’t running.

Following that discovery, police went to Ewida’s home on May 19 and conducted a “knock and talk” in which they found the ProMaster with an engine with a ground off serial number and an engine identification sticker from the Caravan.

The co-owner of an East Butler business who testified Tuesday that he sold the ProMaster to Ewida for $200 said there was “something blown in the engine” and it didn’t run well enough to use.

Ewida, who testified Wednesday, denied the allegations and said the troopers who came to his home in plain clothes insulted his Egyptian heritage, accused him of being a member of ISIS and not being a U.S. citizen, and threatened to have him deported. Ewida said he has been a citizen since 2018. Ewida became angry and used profanities directed at the troopers while he testified.

Ewida’s fiancée gave similar testimony. Both said they saw one of the troopers grind the engine serial number off the engine in the ProMaster in their driveway.

Defense attorney Al Lindsay, one of two attorneys who represented Ewida, and Assistant District Attorney Robert Zanella summarized their arguments in closing statements Thursday morning.

Lindsay said in his 50 years of practice he had never seen an outburst like Ewida’s, but it validated part of his testimony. Ewida said he was confrontational with the troopers and threatened to sue them, but the troopers who testified described him as cooperative.

“Dream on,” Lindsay told the jury if they believed Ewida cooperated with police after seeing his conduct on the witness stand.

He said police concocted the case against Ewida after he didn’t confess during the “knock and talk.”

“This is the story of a knock and talk that went wrong,” Lindsay said.

He said weather data from May 19, 2020 indicates it wasn’t windy that day, which contradicts testimony from the troopers who said a gust of wind blew down a tent that was partially covering the front end of the ProMaster in Ewida’s driveway while they were there.

Lindsay said there is a gap in the evidence. No testimony was given about what happened to the Caravan between May 7, when Ewida returned it, and May 12, when it was towed to the Dodge dealership, and May 18, when police examined the vehicle with dealership mechanics, he said.

There was also a 75-mile discrepancy between the 10,466 odometer reading on the Caravan on May 7 and the 10,541 reading on May 12 that was not explained, Lindsay said.

“These are holes in their evidence,” Lindsay said.

Zanella said if Lindsay’s arguments were true, Ewida was the subject of the “greatest conspiracy ever” involving state police, the business that sold Ewida the ProMaster, Enterprise and the mechanic at the Dodge dealership.

He said police didn’t get involved until the dealership discovered the Caravan didn’t have it’s original engine.

If the conspiracy theory was true, why would police grind off the engine serial number, Zanella asked. He said it would have been easier for police to prove the charges if the serial numbers were in place. The dealership was only able to determine the engine in the Caravan came from a Chrysler product built in 2015 or 2016 because the serial number was missing, he said.

Ewida made a mistake by neglecting to remove an engine identification sticker belonging to a 2019 Caravan engine that police found when they looked at the ProMaster at Ewida’s home, Zanella said.

He said the weather data that Lindsay mentioned shows the average wind speed on May 19 was 14.9 mph, the sustained wind speed was 26 mph and the peak speed was 32 mph, making it reasonable to believe wind blew down the tent.

The engine of the ProMaster was visible with the tent in place before the wind gust came, he said. Police testified that part of the tent was rolled up, exposing the engine before the tent was blown down.

Zanella said Ewida might have discovered the engines in the Caravan and ProMaster were not interchangeable, which led him to have the Caravan towed back to Enterprise because it didn’t run after he swapped the engines.

He argued that the evidence against Ewida would not have been presented in court if it had been illegally obtained and the troopers “would have been taken down already” if there was proof they lied.

Zanella said Ewida made another mistake by taking a photo of the Caravan’s odometer reading using his cellphone. He said the a time stamp from the phone revealed the photo was taken April 30 at 11 a.m., and Ewida testified that he took the photo at his home.

However, video from Enterprise shows Ewida left the office with the Caravan at 10:51 a.m. that day.

“Unless he rented a flying Caravan, he didn’t make it back to his residence in nine minutes,” Zanella said.

Regarding the mileage discrepancy, Zanella said Ewida could have taken the odometer photo just after he left Enterprise.

After the trial ended, Lindsay declined to comment on the trial or verdict.

Zanella said “justice was done” and he thanked the troopers for enduring “the lies” against them.