Erin Piacenti, 32, who was stabbed to death in the Times Square area in Manhattan on Monday afternoon, was a vice president of business selection and conflicts at Bank of America and had just celebrated her second wedding anniversary a few weeks prior, the New York Post reported.
The Chester, N.J., resident, who was stabbed in the abdomen while walking near West 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue at about 4:30 p.m., died in the hospital, according to New York City Police Department commissioner Jessica Tisch.
“I’m deeply saddened to report that one of the victims has passed away, as has the alleged perpetrator,” Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, told reporters on Monday evening. “The second victim is currently in the hospital in stable condition.”
Police officers “prevented a horrific attack from becoming even worse,” he said. “This is what the men and women of this department do every single day to keep our city safe.”
Tisch told reporters that it was an “unprovoked double stabbing.”
The NYPD received preliminary reports of “a woman armed with two knives who was stabbing people along 7th Avenue in Times Square,” she said.
Tisch added that witnesses said the suspect “approached a man, who had just exited the subway and was standing with his wife waiting to cross the street” and removed “two knives from a red Target bag before approaching the first victim.”
“The subject waved the knives before stabbing a 68-year-old man in the right side of his abdomen in what appears to be a random and unprovoked attack,” she said. “The subject then proceeded up 7th Avenue toward 42nd Street and approached a second victim, a 32-year-old woman, stabbing her in the abdomen. We believe that this too was a random and unprovoked attack.”
The stabbings took place “within approximately 20 seconds of each other,” she said.
The suspect, later identified as Pamela Cisneros, 49, of Queens, continued northbound on 7th Avenue, where witnesses pointed her out to police officers. Between West 42nd and 43rd Street, officers talked to her for four minutes and “gave her numerous commands to drop the knives, which she refused,” Tisch said.
“During the encounter, she told the officers, ‘I’m not dropping anything. I would rather kill both of you.’ She repeated, ‘I will kill you,’” Tisch told reporters. “The subject began waving the knives and advanced towards the officers.” Though “multiple” officers shot tasers at her, she kept advancing with the knives, after which two officers shot her with their guns, Tisch said.
She added that Cisneros has a “documented mental health history” with the NYPD.
“We have no reason to believe this incident was an act of terrorism. This was an extraordinarily dangerous situation unfolding in the heart of Times Square, the crossroads of the world,” she said.
Piacenti, the victim, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and Fordham Law School in 2021, per her LinkedIn page.
