Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at what we know about the stabbings in Times Square that killed a woman and injured a man and the fatal shooting of the assailant by the police.
A knife-wielding woman with what New York City officials said was a history of mental health problems stabbed two people at random in Times Square on Monday afternoon, killing one, before being fatally shot by the police.
Here’s what we know about the deadly episode and those involved in it.
The Assailant
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, speaking at a news conference on Monday, identified the assailant as Pamela Cisneros, 49, of Queens. Cisneros had a “documented mental health history” that included encounters with the police in 2018 and 2019, Tisch said.
Tisch did not elaborate, but according to an internal police report, in December 2019, officers found Cisneros on Lexington Avenue near East 49th Street in Manhattan. She was screaming and acting in a belligerent fashion, and the officers determined that she was intoxicated.
In March 2019, the report says, officers encountered her again after she tried to jump in front of a southbound E train at the Union Turnpike-Kew Gardens subway station in Queens. It is unclear whether she received treatment after the episode.
The next time the police appear to have encountered her was on Monday, when she stabbed two people, one fatally, in the span of less than a minute near the intersection of West 41st Street and Seventh Avenue at about 4:30 p.m., Tisch said at the news conference.
Cisneros first attacked Tak Kam, 68, pulling two kitchen knives from a red Target bag and using one to stab him in the abdomen as he and his wife waited to cross the street, the commissioner said. Seconds later, she said, Cisneros fatally stabbed Erin Piacenti, 32.
Soon after that, officers confronted Cisneros, who still had a knife in each hand, at West 43rd Street, forming a semicircle around her about 10 feet away as cars and pedestrians passed by.
For four minutes, the officers tried to persuade her to drop the knives and then tried shooting her with Tasers, Tisch said. When she began to rush toward them, two officers opened fire.
Other records show that Cisneros had been married to a Citibank employee in New York and that they shared two daughters. But they filed for bankruptcy in 2005, reporting just $300 in a checking account. They filed for divorce in 2020 and fought over custody of their youngest daughter, the records show.
The Victims
Erin Piacenti was on her way home to suburban Chester, N.J., when she was killed. She had just started her first week back at work as a Bank of America vice president after several months of maternity leave following the birth of her daughter.
Kam, who was expected to recover, was in the city to visit his son when he was attacked, according to a law enforcement official.
Piacenti, who worked in Bank of America’s business selection and conflicts division, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a member of the a cappella group Dischord.
She attended Fordham University’s law school, where she met her husband, Frank Piacenti, graduated magna cum laude and was inducted into the Order of the Coif, the honor society for law school graduates, Joseph Landau, the law school’s dean, said in a letter to alumni on Tuesday.
Four days before she was killed, she posted a photo of herself on social media beaming while holding her baby girl and standing with her husband.
“As my maternity leave comes to an end,” she wrote, “I could not be more grateful for every day of the last five months spent with this amazing little girl.”
The Police
In videos of the fatal shooting, Cisneros appears to be only a few feet from the officers when they open fire. Tisch said the officers’ response was appropriate given the circumstances.
“Our officers did exactly what they’re trained to do,” she said.
Several law enforcement experts and retired Police Department senior officers agreed, saying the officers had been completely justified in shooting once Cisneros began to advance on them. But some questioned some of the other police tactics that preceded the shooting.
One video shows that as Cisneros faced off against the roughly half-dozen officers around her in a semicircle, the street behind her remained open to traffic. Cars, taxis and several pedestrians can be seen going by in the roadway seconds before the shooting, and a uniformed officer is visible in the street.
“That was very dangerous, the way they shot there,” said Philip Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University who reviewed video of the episode.
Kirk Burkhalter, a retired New York police detective and a professor at New York Law School who teaches a course unit on “policing the mentally ill,” said the presence of a mental health professional might have helped to defuse the situation.
“In a perfect world, we should have enough mental health professionals to serve the entire city,” he said. “It’s a matter of having enough people and having them available, and being willing to invest the financial resources to have them available in the same way we staff precincts and firehouses.”
Weather
Expect a mostly cloudy day, with a chance of showers in the afternoon, and a high around 77. Clouds, rain and possible thunderstorms are expected to continue as temperatures in the evening fall to around 70.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Monday (Labor Day).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I think that’s a rite of passage.” — Aliye Reinhardt, who works at a utility company, on posting a picture of her Grey Goose Honey Deuce cocktail, the U.S. Open’s signature drink, on social media.
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METROPOLITAN diary
Gusty day
Dear Diary:
It was an early evening on a hot, extremely windy summer day, and I was walking headfirst into the humid gusts on my way to eat my takeout dinner on the Battery Park City Esplanade.
I paused while waiting to cross West Street. Across the street from me, a man in athletic clothes was jogging in place on the landscaped median, the wind at his back.
When the light changed, I started to cross. I noticed that the man kept jogging in place rather than resuming his run.
Just then, a man pushing a stroller entered the median, wind at his back as well. Still jogging in place, the runner gracefully extended his hand, which held a baseball hat. The man with the stroller accepted it with thanks.
The wind continued to blow, and the two men continued on in the same direction, the runner sprinting ahead and the man with the stroller gripping the hat tightly.
— Marisa Lorenzo
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. — E.S.
Davaughnia Wilson contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post What We Know About the Deadly Events in Times Square appeared first on New York Times.
