The 32-year-old Ivy League banker was a new mom who had just returned to work after maternity leave, according to US media reports.
The woman who was killed in a “random and unprovoked” knife attack on Times Square in New York City was Bank of America Vice President Erin Piacenti, authorities said.
He was hospitalised, and no update on his condition was immediately available. Officers shot and killed her after the stabbing. Police later described Cisneros as a mentally disturbed mom of three. The attack happened in one of the busiest and most heavily policed areas in New York — next to a police station and just outside the building that hosts the city’s annual New Year’s Eve ball drop celebration. A man was fatally stabbed in the same area in May. Bystander videos recorded police gathering around Cisneros as she held two large knives in front of her. Then, as they used a stun gun on her, she waved the knives and walked quickly toward the officers, the video showed.
She had earned a law degree from Fordham Law School, graduating in 2021 alongside her husband, Frank Piacenti, according to the school. One more person, a 68-year-old man whose identity hasn’t been released, was also injured in the attack. Police identified the attacker Tuesday as Pamela Cisneros, 49, of Queens. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said she had mental-health-related encounters with police in 2018 and 2019 but had no arrest record in New York City.
Fordham Law said in a statement it was heartbroken by her death. The banking exec was stabbed to death by a knife-wielding woman in New York’s tourist and theater hub in what police later described as a “random and unprovoked” attack.
The divorced mother of three had been taking medications and doing better in the last several years, working on and off in a legal office, according to Peralta, who said he last saw her at a relative’s birthday gathering early last month. He said Cisneros skipped family dinners last week but assured their mother she was OK in a phone call Saturday. “We really don’t know how to express or how to explain why this happened,” Peralta told Gothamist, expressing sympathy for Piacenti’s family and the injured man.
