He began describing his relationship with Kimberly.
Both of them worked.
Kimberly was also attending school.
They were raising a one-year-old daughter.
Steven portrayed himself as somebody who had taken on a large share of the childcare responsibilities.
That was his perspective.
It is important not to treat it automatically as an objective description of their relationship.
Investigators were listening to one partner describe the relationship after that partner had been arrested for violently attacking the other.
Still, his statements mattered because they revealed how he viewed the situation.
Steven said he felt increasingly frustrated.
He described feeling isolated.
He said he felt sad.
He described himself as depressed.
He seemed to believe that he was carrying responsibilities without receiving enough support or recognition.
The detectives allowed him to talk about these feelings.
They needed to understand what resentments might have existed before the attack.
That does not mean resentment explains or excuses violence.
Millions of people feel exhausted, underappreciated, lonely, or frustrated without attacking their partners with weapons.
But Steven's statements helped investigators understand the mental framework he claimed to have been operating within before the incident.
Then the conversation moved to drug use.
Steven admitted using marijuana.
He also mentioned taking what he referred to as liquid cocaine.
Investigators asked how the substance affected him.
Steven claimed that it normally made him feel calm or fine.
He acknowledged using it before the incident.
Again, this did not automatically explain what happened.
The source material does not establish exactly what role, if any, the substance played in the attack.
But it was part of the information Steven himself gave detectives.
And detectives had every reason to ask.
A violent event had occurred.
The suspect claimed memory loss.
Any recent substance use could potentially be relevant to understanding his condition.
Eventually, investigators brought the conversation back to the conflict with Kimberly.
What had happened immediately before the violence?
The answer involved Fortnite.
That detail would later become one of the most attention-grabbing parts of the case.
It is easy to understand why.
A machete attack following an argument involving a video game sounds bizarre.
It creates an immediate headline.
But the deeper story was more complicated than simply saying a man attacked his fiancé because she was playing Fortnite.
According to Kimberly's account, she had been sitting on the couch playing.
Steven was trying to take their one-year-old daughter to bed.
Kimberly said the little girl appeared scared to go with him.
Steven described the child's behavior differently.
He told detectives that the girl was crying because she wanted attention from Kimberly.
Kimberly was wearing headphones.
She was focused on the game.
Steven believed she was not giving their daughter enough attention.
That difference between their accounts is important.
Two people can experience the same domestic moment in completely different ways.
Kimberly apparently saw a child who did not want to go with Steven.
Steven saw a child who wanted her mother's attention while Kimberly was distracted by Fortnite.
We do not need to choose between those interpretations to understand the next part of the story.
Steven told detectives that Kimberly's gaming had already become a source of frustration for him.
He complained that she could play for extremely long periods.
He suggested that gaming was interfering with other responsibilities and with the attention she gave their daughter.
Again, these were Steven's claims.
The investigation was not establishing that his complaints were objectively fair.
It was establishing what Steven said he believed.
From his perspective, the Fortnite session that night was not an isolated annoyance.
It represented a larger problem he thought existed in the relationship.
He wanted their daughter put to bed.
He wanted the child on a consistent sleep schedule.
Kimberly apparently wanted to keep the little girl on the couch with her while she continued playing.
The disagreement grew.
What began as a parenting disagreement became an argument.
Voices rose.
Frustration intensified.
Steven told investigators that Kimberly pushed him.
And then he reached the point in the story where his memory, according to him, stopped.
He said he blacked out.
He could remember the argument.
He could remember events around the violence.
But the central portion, the part in which Kimberly was attacked with the machete, was something Steven claimed he could not remember.
That statement immediately created a problem for investigators.
Memory loss is difficult to evaluate.
A detective cannot look at a person and know whether a claimed blackout is genuine.
Some people experience fragmented memory during traumatic, intoxicated, or highly emotional events.
Some people genuinely remember only pieces.
Other people use memory loss because they do not want to describe what they did.
Sometimes a person may remember more than he is willing to admit.
The source does not establish which explanation applied to Steven.
Investigators did not have to resolve that question immediately.
Because this case contained something more reliable than Steven's memory.
The Ring camera.
At some point in the investigation, officers obtained or reviewed footage recorded at the property.
That footage preserved at least part of the violent confrontation.
And once detectives watched it, Steven's claimed memory gap became less important to reconstructing the physical events.
He could say he did not remember.
The camera did.
The footage showed Steven.
It showed Kimberly.
It showed the machete.
It showed the pursuit.
Kimberly could be seen or heard trying to get away.
What had started inside the home had moved into a desperate attempt to escape.
This is one of the most disturbing transitions in domestic violence cases.
An argument between two people who know each other intimately can suddenly become a survival situation.
The home that is supposed to be a place of safety becomes the place the victim must escape from.
The person she trusted becomes the person she is running from.
In Kimberly's case, the danger was coming from her fiancé.
The father of her child.
The man with whom she had apparently planned a future.
She was not escaping an unknown intruder.
She was escaping Steven.
The Ring footage reportedly showed him pursuing her with the machete.
At moments, Kimberly could be heard trying to get away.
The source indicates that there were also moments where Steven appeared emotional or apologetic during the confrontation.
That detail makes the footage even more disturbing rather than less.
Emotion and violence can exist at the same time.
A person can say he is sorry and continue behaving dangerously.
He can express affection while still causing terror.
Words do not automatically reduce the threat created by the weapon in his hand.
Kimberly kept trying to escape.
At some point Steven also interacted with the Ring camera itself.
During the interrogation, detectives asked him about that.
Steven admitted remembering grabbing the camera.
That was interesting.
He claimed not to remember the most violent portion of the attack.
But he remembered taking hold of the device recording part of it.