Pamela Cisneros was shot and killed by police in Times Square on Monday afternoon after authorities said she stabbed two strangers and refused orders to drop two knives. The confrontation ended in gunfire on one of New York’s busiest corners, after officers said the attack had already left one person dead and another wounded.
The woman who died in the stabbing was Erin Piacenti, 32, a vice president for Bank of America who police said was heading home from work after recently celebrating her second wedding anniversary. Police said a 68-year-old Rhode Island man, visiting New York with his wife to see their son, was also stabbed in the abdomen while waiting to cross West 41st Street and Seventh Avenue; he has since been released from the hospital.
For the people who saw the violence unfold, the scene turned from ordinary foot traffic to a police shooting in seconds. Video from the area showed a woman waving knives at officers before shots were fired, and authorities said the response came only after she would not obey commands to put the weapons down.
Mario Cisneros pushed back on the image of his daughter as an attacker. He said Pamela had been receiving monthly medication injections for a mental illness, had appeared fine when he saw her the week before, and was not a violent person. He also said he believed her struggles became clear after the birth of one of her children and that he thought she suffered from postpartum depression, though he did not say what specific condition she had been treated for.
That account sits beside a record that police say included repeated mental health crises. Authorities said she had been hospitalized numerous times over the years, with calls involving her in 2018 and 2019, including a report that she was belligerent at a Manhattan hotel and another in which she jumped onto subway tracks in an apparent suicide attempt. Those episodes do not explain Monday’s killings, but they do show why her family says the violence came as a shock and why police were already familiar with her name before the attack.
Bank of America said it was shocked and deeply saddened by Piacenti’s death, calling her a valued teammate who would be missed. The broader question now is not whether the attack happened; that part is clear. It is how someone who family members say was being treated for mental illness was able to carry knives into a crowded stretch of Times Square, stab two strangers, and force officers to make a deadly split-second decision in public.
