Police have identified the woman behind Monday afternoon’s Times Square stabbing as Pamela Cisneros, a 49-year-old Queens resident who was shot and killed by NYPD officers after she refused to put down two kitchen knives. A 32-year-old woman she stabbed also died. A 68-year-old man was stabbed in the abdomen and remains hospitalized in stable condition after initially being listed with life threatening injuries.
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NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch laid out the timeline at an evening press conference. The first 911 calls came in at 4:24 p.m. near West 41st Street and Seventh Avenue. A witness saw Cisneros pull two knives out of a red Target bag. She approached the 68-year-old man, who had just come up from the subway and was waiting to cross the street with his wife, and stabbed him in the stomach. Roughly 20 seconds later, she stabbed the 32-year-old woman in the stomach as well. Tisch called both attacks random and unprovoked. The victim taken to Bellevue Hospital was pronounced dead there.
The entire Times Square stabbing lasted about five minutes from first call to final shot. After the two attacks, Cisneros kept walking north on Seventh Avenue, still holding both knives. Witnesses flagged down officers, who found her between West 42nd and West 43rd streets near the NYPD substation.
What happened next is the part the department is now under internal review for. Tisch said officers talked to Cisneros for four minutes and gave her repeated commands to drop the knives. She would not. According to Tisch, Cisneros told them, “I’m not dropping anything. I would rather kill both of you,” and then repeated that she would kill them. Officers deployed Tasers twice. The Tasers did not stop her. As she advanced on them with the knives raised, two officers fired their service weapons at 4:27 p.m. Cisneros was taken to Bellevue and died there. Both knives were recovered at the scene, and the NYPD released a photo of them.
Officials say Cisneros had no arrest history at all. What she did have was a documented mental health history with the NYPD, including recorded contacts in 2018 and 2019. Investigators are still working through that history. There is no indication the attack was terrorism related, and police have repeatedly described her as emotionally disturbed rather than as someone acting on any motive they can identify.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani addressed the shooting at the same briefing, thanking the officers who responded. “I want to thank the NYPD officers who stepped in and prevented a horrific attack from becoming even worse,” he said, adding that the families of the victims have had their lives shattered. Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, also credited the speed of the police response with keeping the toll from climbing higher.
The shooting was captured on body worn cameras. Mamdani confirmed the footage will be released to the public, which is standard NYPD policy for police involved shootings, and the department has opened an internal investigation into whether the officers acted within guidelines. The names of both stabbing victims are being withheld until their families are notified.
The Times Square stabbing landed in a year where New York City crime numbers have actually been moving in the other direction. Homicides in the city are down 24 percent so far this year and on pace to hit one of the lowest totals in decades. This is the second killing in the Times Square area in 2026, after a man was fatally stabbed there in May.
Videos from bystanders circulated widely within hours, including footage of the standoff and of Cisneros holding both knives as officers backed up along Seventh Avenue. One person who filmed part of the attack said the woman stabbed the person standing directly in front of him. Seventh Avenue stayed partially closed into Monday night while investigators worked the scene, and it reopened late.
