It was 4:26 p.m. in Times Square.
A 49-year-old woman from Queens pulled two knives from a shopping bag and attacked a 68-year-old man who was leaving the subway with his wife. She wounded him in the abdomen. Seconds later, she attacked another person, a woman who did not survive.
Everything happened just yards from an NYPD substation, near 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue. When officers arrived, the woman advanced toward them with the weapons raised, and they caught her. Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed the sequence, and authorities are already investigating whether the incident, which initially appeared to be a robbery, was actually a random attack linked to her mental health.
It is the second homicide of the year at that same Manhattan corner, one of the most heavily monitored and photographed places on the planet.