{"id":335347,"date":"2026-09-01T23:06:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T23:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/335347\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T23:06:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T23:06:20","slug":"times-square-stabber-killed-in-nypd-shooting-struggled-with-mental-illness-for-decades-family-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/335347\/","title":{"rendered":"Times Square stabber killed in NYPD shooting struggled with mental illness for decades, family says"},"content":{"rendered":"

The stunned family of Times Square stabber Pamela Cisneros<\/a> says she had a decades-long history of mental illness including postpartum depression, multiple hospitalizations \u2014 and a suicide attempt in which she threw herself on the subway tracks.<\/p>\n

Cisneros, 49, randomly stabbed two strangers, killing one of them,<\/a> before NYPD officers shot her dead \u2014 but her brother Patrick Peralta told the Daily News he never knew her to harm anyone other than herself before Monday\u2019s rampage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what was in her head,\u201c Peralta, 59, said Tuesday. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you what she was thinking or if she just completely went blank. I don\u2019t know where that rage came from.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PamelaPamela Cisneros’ brother, Patrick Peralta, holds a photo of his sister a day after she was fatally shot by NYPD officers. (Roni Jacobson \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

Peralta, a certified surgical technician, has a different father that Cisneros but the two grew up together with their mother in an apartment in Jackson Heights.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was a happy-go-lucky kid,\u201d Peralta recalled. \u201cIn summertime, she was my tail because she would follow me around. She was like 5. I went out and played with my friends and she was always with me all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her mental health problems developed about two decades ago, after she gave birth to the second of her three daughters.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe went off track after that,\u201d Peralta said.<\/p>\n

Postpartum depression has come into the national spotlight with the Massachusetts trial of Lindsey Clancy, who\u2019s accused of murdering her three children<\/a> in January 2023. Clancy\u2019s defense lawyer has argued she shouldn\u2019t be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the jury\u00a0 announced it had deadlocked on a verdict<\/a>, though the judge overseeing the case sent them back for more deliberations.<\/p>\n

Cisneros\u2019 middle child is autistic and nonverbal and lives in a group home in Brooklyn, Peralta said. Cisneros would often visit her.<\/p>\n

Her other two daughters live in Florida with their father, Pamela\u2019s ex-husband. Peralta had to break the news to those two daughters over the phone Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

\"PamelaPamela Cisneros (pictured) was fatally shot by NYPD officers after refusing to drop two knives she was swinging as she approached them in Times Square Monday.<\/p>\n

Cisneros, who has no arrest history in New York, has been hospitalized several times and seven years ago threw herself on the subway tracks in Queens only to be rescued by an onlooker, Peralta said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen she was in Jamaica Hospital,\u201d he said. \u201cThen she went to Bellevue (Hospital) a couple of times. She was seeing doctors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police sources confirm Cisneros jumped onto the tracks on the E train line at the Union Turnpike station on March 6, 2019.<\/p>\n

That was one of two mental health crises involving the NYPD, the sources said. In the other incident, cops were called because she was drunk, screaming and acting belligerent at a hotel on Lexington Ave. near E. 49th St. in Midtown East on Dec. 20, 2018.<\/p>\n

Because she had trouble taking daily psychiatric medication Cisneros was prescribed monthly injections instead, her brother said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the last six years now, she was getting injections and nothing was wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cAs long as she got the medication, she was fine \u2026 She never showed any violence towards anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe used to go in person (to get the injections) and then I just found out that now she was doing it herself,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I don\u2019t know if she stopped doing it, because my parents are old and are they trying to check to make sure that she was getting injections. That\u2019s the only thing I can suggest, that maybe she didn\u2019t get the last couple of months of injections. Her brain was going all over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"APamela Cisneros was shot by NYPD cops after refusing to drop two knives she was swinging as she approached them in Times Square Monday. (Courtesy of Jorge Disla)<\/p>\n

On Monday, Cisneros pulled two kitchen knives out of a Target bag and stabbed a 68-year-old Rhode Island man in the abdomen near W. 41st St. and Seventh Ave. at 4:24 p.m., cops said. He survived.<\/p>\n

Within 20 seconds, she made her way to W. 42nd St. and fatally stabbed 32-year-old Erin Piacenti, a vice president at Bank of America.<\/a> Police surrounded her near an NYPD substation by W. 43rd St., and Tased then fatally shot her as she advanced on them, swinging a knife in each hand.<\/p>\n

\"ErinErin Piacenti, pictured, of Chester, N.J., died in Monday afternoon’s bloody rampage when Pamela Cisneros, a 49-year-old Queens woman with a history of mental illness, pulled two kitchen knives out of a Target bag and started stabbing strangers.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe used to come and eat dinner with my parents mostly every night,\u201d Peralta said. \u201cBut last week she didn\u2019t show, so we started calling her to see what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peralta recognized his sister from the viral cell phone videos that made the news showing her final moments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was shocked,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m still numb. I saw it on the news last night. Something told me that she looks like my sister. So I called Midtown South<\/a>. I give them my info and then by 7:30 (p.m.), they called me back.\u201d<\/p>\n

He last saw her for her father\u2019s birthday on Aug, 8. \u201cShe was fine. Normal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Her mother last talked to her on the phone Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Cisneros) said she was fine,\u201d Peralta recounted. \u201cMy mother is devastated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA woman was shot by NYPD cops after refusing to drop two knives she was swinging as she approached them in Times Square Monday. (Barry Williams \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

Cisneros was living alone in Woodside and had been out of work for a while. But three months ago she landed a job as an administrative assistant for a lawyer, her brother said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy entire family feels so sorry for the two people, the one that passed away and the one who was hurt,\u201d Peralta said. \u201cWe are so sorry. We never thought this would happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Rocco Parascandola<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The stunned family of Times Square stabber Pamela Cisneros says she had a decades-long history of mental illness…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[262,263,266,85,267,75,84,83,9,24,264,10,12,63,261,122,265],"class_list":["post-335347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-new-york-news","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-queens","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}