Investigators wanted to know why.
Steven could not offer a clear explanation.
He said he did not remember why he had grabbed it.
But from an evidentiary standpoint, the act mattered.
A recording device at a crime scene can become evidence.
If someone tries to remove, damage, disable, or otherwise interfere with it after or during a crime, investigators have to consider whether the person is attempting to affect evidence.
The case would later include a tampering-with-evidence charge.
The Ring footage now gave detectives leverage inside the interrogation room.
They could allow Steven to describe the night in his own words.
Then they could compare those words with the recording.
Eventually, they confronted him more directly.
They told Steven they had watched the video.
That is a critical moment in any interrogation.
Until then, a suspect may believe there is uncertainty.
He may believe investigators have only the victim's story.
He may believe gaps remain.
But when detectives reveal that they have video, the balance changes.
Steven's statement was no longer the only account of what happened during his alleged blackout.
The detectives began explaining what the footage showed.
According to police, Steven chased Kimberly with the machete and struck her twice.
One strike hit her arm.
The injury was serious.
Her arm was fractured.
There was also a large wound.
The second major strike hit the top of her head.
That injury was even more alarming.
Kimberly suffered a fractured skull.
Her head had been split open.
Investigators described a loud, sharp impact captured during the attack, a sound associated with the machete striking the area of Kimberly's head.
A head strike with a machete is not a minor assault.
The potential consequences are immediately life-threatening.
The skull protects the brain, but it is not indestructible.
The fact that Kimberly's skull fractured demonstrates the force involved.
Likewise, the injury to her arm shows what happened when she tried to protect herself.
In violent attacks, victims often raise their arms instinctively.
The arms become a shield between the weapon and the head or torso.
That can save a life.
It can also produce devastating injuries.
Kimberly survived.
But that word can make what happened sound less serious than it was.
Survival is an outcome.
It is not a measurement of how dangerous the attack was.
Someone can survive an action that could easily have killed them.
Kimberly had been hit in the head with a machete hard enough to fracture her skull.
She had suffered a serious arm injury.
She had lost blood.
She had fled the house.
And she had reached a neighbor while still trying to understand where her baby was.
There was nothing minor about it.
As detectives told Steven what they had seen, his demeanor reportedly changed.
He appeared increasingly distressed.
He listened as they described Kimberly's injuries.
Her arm.
Her head.
Her skull.
The machete.
The chase.
Then investigators told him something he clearly wanted to know.
Kimberly was alive.
She was conscious.
She could speak.
Steven appeared relieved.
But relief did not change the facts.
Kimberly's survival did not erase the attack.
It simply meant the attempted violence had not ended in her death.
Steven seemed to struggle with the person detectives were describing.
He told them this was not who he was.
He spoke about Kimberly as his family.
He referenced their relationship.
He referenced the life they had been building.
This reaction created one of the central contradictions in the case.
Steven saw himself as Kimberly's partner.
The father of her child.
Someone who cared about his family.
The Ring footage showed him pursuing that same partner with a machete.
People often think identity and behavior must always match cleanly.
A loving fiancé would never do something like this.
A caring father would never create this kind of danger.
But criminal cases repeatedly show that people can carry conflicting identities.
A person can love somebody and still harm them.
A person can think of himself as a protector and still become the source of danger.
A person can regret violence immediately afterward and still be legally responsible for causing it.
The detectives did not need to resolve Steven's internal contradiction.
Their job was not to determine whether Steven's self-image was sincere.
Their job was to determine what he had done.
On that question, the evidence was far clearer.
Kimberly had wounds.
The machete had been recovered.
The neighbor had seen Kimberly immediately after the attack.
The 911 calls documented the emergency.
Steven had contacted Kimberly's mother.
Steven himself had called police.
And the Ring camera captured part of the violence.
Each piece supported another.
That is how strong criminal cases are often built.
Not around one dramatic piece of evidence, but around multiple pieces that connect.
The Ring video mattered enormously.
But even without it, there was physical evidence.
Even without the machete, there were witness statements.
Even without the witness, there were injuries.
Even without Steven's call, there was his later surrender.
When evidence overlaps like that, the timeline becomes harder to dispute.
This is also what made Steven's claimed blackout less useful as a factual defense to the basic sequence.
He may or may not have remembered.
The investigation did not require his memory to establish what happened.
His memory was no longer the record.
The camera was part of the record.
Kimberly's injuries were part of the record.
The machete was part of the record.
The emergency calls were part of the record.
That difference matters enormously in modern criminal investigations.
Before widespread home surveillance cameras, many domestic violence incidents occurred almost entirely outside independent observation.
Two people argued inside a house.
One person was injured.
The suspect said one thing.
The victim said another.
Police then had to rely on injuries, physical damage, witness statements from neighbors, forensic evidence, and credibility assessments.
Cameras have changed that dynamic.
Doorbell cameras.
Security cameras.