On a Monday afternoon in one of the world's most trafficked corridors, a thirty-two-year-old woman named Erin Piacenti — a lawyer by training, a banker by vocation, a wife by choice — was killed without warning or reason near Times Square. The randomness of the act is its own kind of statement about the fragility that underlies even the most deliberately constructed lives. Police ended the attack by killing the assailant, but the questions that remain — about safety, about the city, about the distance between an ordinary afternoon and a final one — do not resolve so cleanly.
Bank of America VP killed in unprovoked NYC stabbing near Times Square
Erin Piacenti, 32, was fatally stabbed in an unprovoked attack; another victim was also stabbed; the assailant was killed by police.