And it showed the chase.
The footage reportedly captured Kimberly desperately trying to get away while Steven pursued her.
This was not just a verbal argument anymore.
It was a woman fleeing from the father of her child while he carried a large blade.
Kimberly could be heard during the confrontation.
She was trying to escape.
She was trying to survive.
At moments, the exchange between the two was disturbingly personal.
Steven appeared emotional.
There were indications of apology or conflicted emotion.
But the danger did not stop.
That contrast is one of the most unsettling parts of the case.
The person attacking Kimberly was not a stranger.
He was her fiancé.
The man she lived with.
The father of her baby.
The person with whom she had apparently planned a future.
During the police interview, detectives asked Steven about the camera itself.
He admitted remembering grabbing the Ring camera.
They wanted to know why.
Steven could not give them a clear explanation.
He said he did not remember why he had done it.
But he remembered taking hold of it.
That mattered.
Because when someone interferes with a device that has captured evidence of a crime, investigators naturally ask whether that person was trying to destroy, remove, or alter the evidence.
The Ring camera would later contribute to a tampering-with-evidence charge.
Detectives then confronted Steven more directly.
They told him they had seen the video.
This was the point when the interview became impossible to separate from the physical evidence.
Steven could say he did not remember what happened.
The detectives could tell him what the camera showed.
According to police, the footage captured Steven chasing Kimberly with the machete and striking her twice.
One strike hit her arm.
The injury was severe.
Her arm was fractured.
There was also a large cut.
Another strike hit the top of her head.
That injury was even more alarming.
Detectives told Steven that Kimberly’s skull had been fractured.
Her head had been split open.
At one point in the recording, investigators described hearing a loud, sharp sound as the machete struck near or against her head.
The violence that Steven claimed not to remember had left very real injuries.
Kimberly survived.
But surviving did not mean the attack had been minor.
A fractured skull can be catastrophic.
A blow from a machete to the head can kill.
A deep strike to an arm can cause enormous blood loss or permanent damage.
The difference between serious injury and death can come down to centimeters.
As detectives explained Kimberly’s condition, Steven’s demeanor changed.
He appeared increasingly distressed.
He listened as investigators described what the blade had done.
Then they told him something he desperately needed to know.
Kimberly was alive.
She was awake.
She was able to speak.
Steven seemed relieved.
But the relief did not erase the reality.
The woman he said was his family had nearly been killed.
At points during the interview, Steven appeared to struggle with the idea that the person detectives were describing was really him.
He said this was not who he was.
He talked about Kimberly as his family.
He referenced their relationship.
He referenced their plans.
But detectives had already seen the recording.
This is one reason video evidence can be so powerful in domestic violence investigations.
After an intense confrontation, stories can differ.
People can minimize.
People can forget.
People can claim they blacked out.
Victims may also be traumatized, injured, or unable to remember every second clearly.
A camera does not interpret.
It does not become emotional.
It does not forget.
It simply records what passes in front of it.
And in this case, investigators believed the footage showed enough to establish the core events.
That did not mean Fortnite itself caused the attack.
That distinction is important.
The video game was part of the argument immediately before the violence.
But Steven’s own statements suggested that the conflict inside the relationship was much larger than one gaming session.
He described accumulated resentment.
He described feeling overburdened.
He described depression.
He complained about the amount of time Kimberly spent gaming.
He complained about parenting responsibilities.
He admitted drug use.
All of those details formed the background.
Then, on March 24, a dispute over their daughter and bedtime became the trigger point for a violent confrontation.
Exactly what combination of anger, resentment, intoxication, impulse, and personal conflict was operating in Steven’s mind cannot be determined from the Ring footage alone.
The video could show behavior.
It could not diagnose motive.
That distinction would eventually matter in court.
Steven was facing extremely serious criminal allegations.
According to the case information, prosecutors charged him with attempted murder.
There were additional charges as well.
Felonious assault.
Domestic violence.
Tampering with evidence.
And endangering children.
The attempted murder charge reflected the seriousness of the attack itself.
The domestic violence charge reflected the relationship between Steven and Kimberly.
The evidence-tampering charge was connected to the handling of the recording device or related evidence.
And because the couple’s one-year-old daughter was part of the environment in which this violence unfolded, Steven also faced a child-endangerment charge.
His defense initially took another turn.
Steven entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
That legal phrase is often misunderstood.
It does not simply mean someone behaved irrationally or did something shocking.
A legal insanity defense involves specific standards about whether a defendant could understand the nature or wrongfulness of their actions at the relevant time.
The plea suggested that Steven’s attorneys intended to place his mental state at the center of the case.
That made his police interview especially significant.
He had told detectives that he felt depressed.
He said he felt like he was losing his mind.
He claimed he did not remember large parts of the attack.
Those statements could potentially become relevant when attorneys and mental health experts evaluated his mental condition.
But Steven’s case did not ultimately end with a jury deciding an insanity defense.
In August 2025, he changed course.
Steven Lewis pleaded guilty.
That decision meant the case would not proceed to a full trial on the original not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity plea.
A court then sentenced him to a prison term of between eight and twelve years.
For prosecutors, the case had reached its legal resolution.
For Kimberly, however, a sentence could not undo what happened.
She had survived a machete attack from the man she had been planning to marry.
She had suffered a fractured arm.
A deep wound.
A head injury.
A fractured skull.
And for at least part of that night, while she was injured and bleeding, she did not know where her one-year-old daughter was.
There is another part of the story that can easily be overlooked because the most dramatic evidence centers on the attack itself.
The neighbor.
Without that neighbor opening the door and immediately calling 911, the timeline could have looked very different.
Kimberly had managed to escape the immediate danger.
But she still needed medical attention.
She needed someone to call police.
She needed somewhere to remain while officers searched for Steven.
That neighbor suddenly became part of a violent situation she had nothing to do with.