32-year-old Erin Piacenti was returning home after work when she was randomly attacked in the middle of Times Square, New York. A woman armed with two knives stabbed her without, according to authorities, any prior provocation. Piacenti later died in the hospital.
The victim was a vice president at Bank of America and a lawyer who graduated from Fordham Law School. She had been working at the bank for around 18 months, and her colleagues described her as a very well-liked person.
But behind her successful career was a family life that was just beginning. She had become the mother of a baby girl just five months earlier, had just celebrated her second wedding anniversary with her husband, Frank, and had recently bought a house with him in New Jersey.
The attacker was identified as 49-year-old Pamela Cisneros. Before attacking Piacenti, she allegedly also stabbed a 68-year-old man, who survived. When police found her, Cisneros was carrying both knives and advanced toward the officers, who shot her.
Authorities are investigating the attack as an apparently random incident. There is no indication that Cisneros knew Piacenti or that there was any personal motive between them.
Within minutes, a woman who had started a family, recently become a mother, and begun a new professional chapter died in one of New York’s busiest places, the victim of an attack that, so far, appears to have had no connection to her whatsoever.
Watch Cisneros get taken down below: