A Bank of America vice president, Erin Piacenti, 32, was fatally stabbed in Times Square on Monday evening while walking home from work, in an attack that also seriously injured another pedestrian before police shot dead the assailant. The case has drawn wider attention after it emerged that Piacenti, of Chester, New Jersey, had been in her first week back at work following maternity leave, having given birth to a daughter five months earlier, adding a particularly tragic dimension to a random public attack that has unsettled her community.

Police say the attacker, Pamela Cisneros Lopez, 49, of Queens, pulled two kitchen knives from a shopping bag and stabbed 68-year-old Tak Ching Kam before turning on Piacenti, who died of her injuries. Officers used a Taser on Lopez without effect before shooting her dead as she advanced on them with the blades, reportedly warning she would "rather kill both of you." Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Lopez had a documented mental health history but no prior arrests, and investigators believe the attack, initially misreported as a robbery, had no clear motive.