Bank of America VP killed in Times Square stabbing; suspect had history of mental health issues

On a Monday morning in the heart of New York City, a young lawyer named Erin Piacenti was killed steps from her office in Times Square, one of the most surveilled and trafficked intersections on earth. Her attacker, a woman with documented psychiatric struggles who had never been violent, carried two kitchen knives through the crowd before the encounter that ended Piacenti's life at 32. The tragedy joins a long and unresolved conversation about how societies care for those in mental crisis before harm is done — and how ordinary mornings can become the site of irreversible loss.