Loïc De Marie was 6 years old when his 4-year-old sister fell into the swimming pool at their home in Belgium.
He did not move. He knew how to swim, but he remained standing at the edge while she swallowed water. Years later, already clinically diagnosed as a psychopath, he recounted it on camera with the same calmness with which he experienced it: “I just stayed there watching her. She was drowning and all that. And I was wondering: so what is going to happen now?”.
De Marie helped his sister with a plastic golf club and brought her closer to the ladder: “I saved her, but in my head I wasn’t willing to throw myself into the pool”. He later explained to his mother that he did not jump in because he was wearing clean clothes, so he never felt the impulse to risk himself.
His testimony raises an uncomfortable question about how a mind processes another person’s danger without the fear or urgency that anyone else would feel.