A woman armed with two knives walked through the heart of Times Square Sunday afternoon and stabbed two strangers, killing one and leaving the other hospitalized, before police shot her dead.
Story Snapshot
- Police say a woman stabbed two people along Seventh Avenue in Times Square just after 4:20 p.m. on August 31, 2026.
- Officials identified the suspect as 49-year-old Pamela Cisneros of Queens.
- A female victim died at the hospital; a male victim remains hospitalized.
- Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch called it an “unprovoked double stabbing” and said officers shot and killed Cisneros.
- Tisch said Cisneros had a documented mental health history with the NYPD from 2018 and 2019, but no arrests.
What Happened On Seventh Avenue
New York police officers rushed to West 43rd Street and Seventh Avenue after a 911 call reported a woman stabbing people along the block. Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters at an evening news conference that officers arrived to find a chaotic scene in one of the most crowded tourist corridors in the country. She described the attack as random and unprovoked, striking strangers with no apparent connection to the suspect.
Tisch identified the suspect as Pamela Cisneros, a 49-year-old woman from Queens. Investigators said she carried two knives and used them on two victims before officers confronted her. Police shot and killed Cisneros during that confrontation, according to the commissioner’s account delivered the same day as the attack.
Two Victims, One Fatal Outcome
A female victim stabbed during the attack later died at the hospital. A male victim who was also stabbed remains hospitalized, according to the NYPD update. The department has not released additional details about the extent of his injuries or his condition beyond confirming he survived the initial attack.
Times Square draws tens of thousands of visitors on any given afternoon, packed with tourists, street performers, and commuters moving through one of the busiest pedestrian zones in Manhattan. An attack there carries an outsized shock factor simply because of the sheer number of people present and the symbolic weight the location holds as a national landmark.
A Documented History Without Arrests
Commissioner Tisch said Cisneros had a documented mental health history with the police department, citing incidents in 2018 and 2019. Importantly, Tisch specified that those prior contacts did not result in any arrests. That detail matters because it shows the department had some awareness of Cisneros before Sunday, even though nothing in her record predicted a violent public attack.
Cases involving police contact with someone in mental health crisis are not rare. National research on police shootings found that roughly 23 percent of injurious shootings by officers involved a subject showing mental or behavioral health symptoms or substance use at the time. That figure underscores how often crisis response and use of force intersect in American policing, a pattern this incident now joins.
The NYPD released a photo showing knives recovered from the scene of a stabbing in Times Square, where a woman carrying multiple knives stabbed two people on Monday, authorities said. pic.twitter.com/bq7NMATyPU
— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 1, 2026
Similar attacks in other cities have followed a familiar arc. Authorities in London and Copenhagen, for example, publicly ruled out terrorism in past knife and gun attacks after investigators found no evidence of radicalization, instead pointing to mental health crises as the driving factor. New York investigators have not issued a formal written statement on any terrorism review tied to Sunday’s attack, and officials have framed the incident as a criminal and mental-health matter rather than an ideological one.
What Comes Next For The Investigation
The NYPD’s internal review of the officer-involved shooting will likely examine body-worn camera footage, radio transmissions, and the sequence of commands given to Cisneros before officers opened fire. These reviews are standard practice following any police shooting in New York City and typically take weeks or months to complete before findings are made public.
Families of both victims now face the aftermath of a random act of violence that unfolded in seconds on a crowded city block. The surviving victim’s recovery, the department’s internal review, and any records detailing Cisneros’s prior contacts with police will shape the fuller picture of Sunday’s events in the days ahead.
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