The wife of a man who survived being stabbed in Times Square recounted Tuesday being ambushed by the mentally ill attacker who was shot to death by NYPD cops minutes later.
The couple, in town from Rhode Island to visit their son, had just exited the Times Square subway station when the 68-year-old husband was attacked from behind, his wife said in an exclusive interview.
The husband was stabbed in the lower back moments before Pamela Cisneros stabbed 32-year-old Erin Piacenti, a Bank of America vice president, to death a block away during an unhinged spree.
“Everything so traumatic, so surprising,” said the survivor’s 67-year-old wife. “You have to run for your life.”
The couple had a couple hours to kill before catching an Amtrak home Monday and so got off the subway in Times Square, planning to stroll to Penn Station. But the moment they emerged from the station they were randomly targeted by Cisneros.
“We have no idea what happened,” said the wife, who asked that she and her husband not be named. “She just came from nowhere.”
“She had lost her mind already, holding the knives,” she added. “We’re just regular visitors here.”
She described putting pressure on her husband’s wound, leaving her unable to call for help.
“Other people helped us to call 911,” she said. “I had no hands. He was also was holding (his wound).”
Cisneros, 49, pulled two knives out of a Target bag and randomly attacked the husband at the corner of W. 41st St. and Seventh Ave. at 4:24 p.m., cops said.
“I saw a guy bleeding profusely … He was gushing blood, saying, ‘I need help. Help me,’” said witness Linda Ruiz, 58. “I went to get a cop on the corner.”
After stabbing the survivor, Cisneros moved on to W. 42nd St., where she stabbed Piacenti to death.
NYPD cops then confronted Cisneros near an NYPD substation on W. 43rd St. When she rushed at them waving a knife in each hand officers shocked her with a Taser, then shot her dead. The clash was caught on cell phone video by multiple shocked bystanders.
Her husband was released from Bellevue Hospital Tuesday and the couple made their way to their son’s home in Park Slope.
“I ask New Yorkers to join me in holding the victim in our thoughts and wishing them a full recovery,” Mayor Mamdani said of the survivor at a Times Square press briefing Monday night.
Cisneros had a history of mental illness. Her brother told the Daily News Tuesday Tuesday she had suffered from postpartum depression and bi-polar disorder for two decades but had never been violent before. She started taking monthly injections of psychiatric medication after she threw herself on the subway tracks at the Union Turnpike stop in Queens in 2019, he said.
“My entire family feels so sorry for the two people, the one that passed away and the one who was hurt,” said the stabber’s brother, Patrick Peralta, 59. “We never thought this would happen.”
The survivor’s wife empathized with Cisneros’ mental health struggles.
“We’re sorry for her that she has something,” the survivor’s wife said. But she doesn’t fault cops for shooting Cisneros to death.
“That’s their job,” she said. “Whatever they’ve been trained to, need to do. So we have no comment on whether she deserved that, but that’s the police’s job.”
