On August 31 in Times Square around 4:26 p.m., Pamela Cisneros, a Queens resident, was seen threatening passersby with two knives. Within a minute, she stabbed two people, fatally wounding one and hospitalizing the other. Officers responding to the scene ordered Cisneros to drop the knives, attempting to disarm her for about four minutes. Three officers then deployed stun guns, which proved ineffective at stopping her advance. When Cisneros continued toward the officers while still holding the knives, two officers shot and killed her.
The two victims of the stabbing were Erin Piacenti and Tak Kam. Tak Kam was the first victim, a 68-year-old man visiting his son in the city, who was approached on the street shortly after exiting the subway. He was stabbed in the side after Cisneros took two knives out of a shopping bag and began behaving erratically. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital for treatment, where he remains in stable condition.
Shortly after, Cisneros ran up to Erin Piacentu, stabbing her in the stomach. Piacentu was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, but the wound proved fatal, and she was pronounced dead at the hospital. Piacentu, a 32-year-old resident of Chester, NJ, was a vice president at Bank of America. She had just started her first week back at work after returning from a five-month maternity leave.
Although Cisneros had no criminal record prior to the stabbings, she did have a history of police encounters involving mental health crises from 2018 and 2019. During the 2018 incident, Cisneros was reportedly intoxicated, belligerent, and screaming on the streets of Midtown Manhattan. Only a few months later, in March 2019, Cisneros attempted to jump in front of a train at a subway station in Queens. After the 2019 incident, Cisneros’s family became more involved in her mental health treatment. Mario Cisneros, her father, told The New York Times that he began taking her to monthly appointments for injections that helped stabilize her. Starting in April, however, Cisneros stopped allowing her father to accompany her to these appointments, leaving her family unsure whether she continued receiving treatment in the months leading up to the incident.
Following the shooting, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that the NYPD would be conducting an internal investigation. The body camera footage of the incident will also be released to the public, although officials have not yet announced when. The investigation into the shooting remains ongoing.
