The family of Erin Piacenti, a 32-year-old Bank of America vice president and new mother, is facing an unimaginable loss after she was fatally stabbed in New York City’s Times Square in what police have described as a random and unprovoked attack.

Piacenti was attacked on the afternoon of August 31 near West 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue. Police say a 49-year-old Queens woman, Pamela Cisneros, first attacked a 68-year-old man before approaching Piacenti. Both victims were taken to Bellevue Hospital, where Piacenti later died from her injuries. The older man survived and was reported to be in stable condition.

The violence unfolded in one of the busiest parts of Manhattan, where tourists, commuters and workers were moving through Times Square. According to investigators, there was no apparent connection between the attacker and either victim, reinforcing the police ᴀssessment that the stabbing was random. Authorities have also said they have found no indication that the incident was terrorism-related.

Cisneros was confronted by NYPD officers shortly after the attacks. Police said she was carrying two large knives and repeatedly refused orders to put them down. Officers attempted to stop her with Tasers, but when she continued advancing toward them while armed, officers opened fire. Cisneros was taken to the hospital and later died. The NYPD Force Investigation Division is examining the circumstances surrounding the police shooting.

But beyond the investigation, Piacenti’s death has left behind a young family whose future changed in an instant.

Piacenti had recently become a mother to her daughter, Madison. According to a fundraiser established for the child, Madison was five months old when her mother was killed. August 31 was also Piacenti’s first day back at work following maternity leave.

Piacenti and her husband, Frank, had recently celebrated their second wedding anniversary and had been building a new life together in Chester, New Jersey. The couple had welcomed their first child only months earlier and had recently returned from a family road trip.

Her professional accomplishments were equally striking. Piacenti graduated from the University of Pennsylvania before earning her law degree, graduating magna cum laude from Fordham University School of Law in 2021. She later worked at Davis Polk and eventually became a vice president at Bank of America.

Yet her family has emphasized that her career was only one part of who she was. To those closest to her, she was a wife, daughter, sister, friend and, most recently, a devoted mother.

A fundraising campaign established to support Madison’s future has drawn an outpouring of public support. As of September 3, it had raised more than $165,000 toward a $250,000 goal, according to the campaign page.

Meanwhile, investigators continue working to understand what led Cisneros to attack two strangers in the middle of Times Square. Police have confirmed that Cisneros had a documented history of mental-health-related encounters with the NYPD, although authorities have not identified a clear motive for the attack.

For Piacenti’s loved ones, however, the central question is no longer simply what happened on that Manhattan sidewalk. It is how a young woman who had just begun a new chapter of motherhood could leave for work one morning and never make it home.

Her family is now mourning a future that had only just begun.