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The woman killed by a knife-wielding woman with a “documented mental health history” in Times Square was a vice-president at Bank of America.
New York City cops fatally shot a woman after she allegedly stabbed two people in the Times Square area on Monday afternoon.
The suspect was allegedly threatening people with two knives near West 42nd St. and Seventh Ave. at 4:26 p.m., eventually stabbing a man and a woman.
Police said the woman with knives left the scene and headed north towards an NYPD substation in Times Square. Officers confronted the suspect, the 49-year-old woman refusing to drop her knives as the cops approached her.
“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,'” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters in a press briefing.
Tisch said officers ordered the woman on several different occasions to drop her weapons, but she refused. Officers deployed their tasers before two officers shot the woman.
The suspect, identified as Pamela Cisneros, of Queens, was pronounced dead at a hospital. She had a “documented mental health history,” Tisch said.
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The victims
The first victim was a 68-year-old man. According to police he had just exited the subway system and was waiting to cross the street with his wife when the suspect pulled a knife from a bag, waved them around, before allegedly stabbing the man in what Tisch said was a “random and unprovoked attack.”
Similar to the incident with the older man, police said the suspect approached a 32-year-old woman and stabbed her in the abdomen in what Tisch termed an “unprovoked attack.” The woman later died in hospital. She was identified as Erin Piacenti, the vice-president of business selection and conflicts with the Bank of America.
Piacenti was a University of Pennsylvania graduate in 2016, and in 2021 graduated from Fordham Law School, according to her LinkedIn profile.
She had celebrated her second wedding anniversary on Aug. 10, according to social media posts.
Police officials said the incident was not terror related. Tisch said two knives were recovered from the scene.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the police department will conduct an internal investigation. The mayor also said the body-camera video will be released to the public.
“I want to thank the NYPD officers who stepped in and prevented a horrific attack from becoming even worse,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said during the press briefing. “This is what the men and women of this department do every single day to keep our city safe.”
ganderson@postmedia.com