Look at him.

This is Shamar Elkins. The man from Shreveport, Louisiana who today shot his ex-girlfriend and her sister. Then killed eight children. Some of them his own. One he chased down to execute.

Now look back at this photo.

What’s missing?

There’s no visible affection. No leaning in. No shared expression. None of the small, unconscious cues you usually see when people are emotionally connected. The kids are next to him, but they’re not with him. They’re placed, not held.

Look at his eyes. He’s looking straight at the camera, but there’s a kind of distance there. There's a controlled, almost performative stillness, like he understands he’s supposed to be in this moment, but isn’t actually in it.

I'm not trying to say that this photo is “proof” of what he would do. A single image can’t diagnose a person or predict an outcome. But it can capture disconnection, emotional absence, and control.

And when you place that next to what happened today, it forces a question: What does it look like when someone doesn’t actually see the people closest to them as fully human?

Because you cannot chase down a child and execute them if you are emotionally tethered to them in any meaningful way. That requires a level of detachment so severe that the child is no longer experienced as a child, or even as a person, but as something else entirely. Either an extension of the mother you hate. An extension of the home you no longer control. An obstacle or burden. A target.

That kind of detachment doesn’t just appear out of nowhere one day fully formed. It accumulates and layers itself over time. It dulls the reflex to respond, soften, to feel. It turns people into objects in your field of vision instead of human beings you are bound to.

And the most dangerous part is how ordinary it can look while it’s happening. It hides in emotional distance that gets brushed off as “that’s just how he is.” It sits inside control that gets mislabeled as protection. It moves through households where presence is mistaken for connection.

Until one day, that distance is no longer just emotional. It’s lethal. Because there is a point, in the most extreme cases, where that gap between being near someone and actually feeling them becomes so wide that it can hold unthinkable violence inside it.