“I CAN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED TO MY SISTER” — THE THREE WEEKS BEFORE PAMELA CISNEROS APPEARED IN TIMES SQUARE

That is what Pamela Cisneros’s family said after the woman they had known for years appeared in Times Square.

For Pamela was not always the person the public saw on August 31.

Her family knew a woman who had once struggled with mental-health issues but had enjoyed years of greater stability. They knew a mother of three. Someone who held a master’s degree in psychology. Someone trying to find work and rebuild her life after her marriage fell apart.

They also knew a Pamela who lived a quiet life in Queens.

No one knows which of those versions changed first.

But as the family looks back on her final weeks, one detail keeps surfacing from the period three weeks before the incident.

AUGUST 10

On August 10, Pamela attended her stepfather’s birthday gathering.

Her brother, Patrick Peralta, was there.

According to Peralta, there was nothing about Pamela that immediately alarmed him. She did not appear aggressive. She helped organize the family gathering, and to those around her, she seemed like the same person they had known.

It would be the last time her brother saw her in person.

The date now carries a significance the family could not have known at the time.

Three weeks later, Pamela would be at the center of a violent attack in the heart of Manhattan.

THE FAMILY THOUGHT SHE WAS FINE

Peralta said Pamela had appeared stable for years.

She had struggled in the past, including serious mental-health crises documented by authorities, but her family believed she had made progress.

Her father, Mario Cisneros, told The New York Times that after a 2019 crisis, he began taking his daughter to regular appointments at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where she received medication injections.

For years, he believed the treatment had helped.

Then came a change in routine.

In April 2026, Mario said Pamela refused his offer to drive her to one of her regular appointments.

Her message to him was simple:

“Don’t worry, Dad. I’m good. Don’t worry about me.”

At the time, her father did not interpret those words as a warning.

He believed his daughter had become more independent.

There is no evidence establishing that this decision caused what happened months later. What it does show is how differently the same moment can look before and after a tragedy.

THE LAST DAYS

After August 10, Pamela’s family continued to believe she was doing well.

But Peralta said she gradually stopped making her usual visits to their mother.

The change was subtle.

She did not disappear completely.

The family could still reach her.

When relatives called, she said she was fine.

Her mother spoke with her on the Saturday before the Times Square attack.

There was no reported conversation that alerted the family to what was about to happen.

And that may be one of the most unsettling parts of the story.

There was no dramatic goodbye.

No clear warning.

No message telling her family that something was terribly wrong.

Instead, there were ordinary conversations — the kind families have every day and rarely remember in detail.

Until one of those conversations becomes the last one.

A QUIET LIFE IN QUEENS

For roughly five years, Pamela had lived alone in a Queens apartment.

Her building manager told The New York Times that she was quiet and kept to herself.

She paid her rent.

She said hello.

She said goodbye.

There were no complaints about her.

From the outside, there was little to suggest that the woman living inside the apartment would later become the subject of a major police investigation.

Her family also remembered a more complicated life.

Pamela was a mother of three daughters. Two lived in Florida with their father, while another daughter lived in a Brooklyn care facility.

Her marriage had eventually collapsed, and the divorce proceedings ended in 2025.

She was also trying to rebuild professionally.

Her brother said she had worked at an immigration law firm, while online records indicate she had earned a master’s degree in psychology.

These details do not explain August 31.

But they help explain why her relatives say they are struggling to reconcile the Pamela they knew with the woman seen in Times Square.

THEN CAME AUGUST 31

On Monday afternoon, the unanswered questions suddenly became impossible to ignore.

Police say Pamela entered Times Square carrying two knives.

At about 4:26 p.m., officers encountered her on Seventh Avenue between West 42nd and West 43rd Streets.

She had already attacked two people.

One victim, 68-year-old Tak Kam, survived.

The second was Erin Piacenti, a 32-year-old Bank of America vice president and new mother who was returning home from her first day back at work following maternity leave.

Piacenti died from her injuries.

When officers confronted Pamela, they ordered her to drop the knives.

She did not comply.

Three officers deployed Tasers, according to the New York Attorney General’s Office, but they had no apparent effect.

Authorities say Pamela then moved toward the officers while still holding the knives.

Two officers fired their service weapons.

Pamela was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The New York Attorney General’s Office has opened an investigation into the police shooting, as required under state law. Officials stressed that the facts remain preliminary and could change.

THE QUESTION HER FAMILY CANNOT ANSWER

Pamela’s family is now left with a question that may never have a simple answer:

What changed?

They remember the woman who struggled.

They remember the woman who appeared to stabilize.

They remember the mother, the daughter, the sister and the woman who quietly lived in Queens.

And they remember the woman they spoke to only days before the attack — a woman who, by their accounts, did not tell them she was in crisis.

That is why her brother’s words continue to resonate:

“I don’t know what happened.”

The family can reconstruct the timeline.

They can identify August 10.

They can remember the phone call on Saturday.

They can remember the years of treatment, the divorce, the professional setbacks and the increasingly private life.

But none of those details provides a definitive explanation for what happened on August 31.

And investigators have not publicly established one.

For the people who knew Pamela before the headlines, that gap between the woman they remembered and the woman the world saw in Times Square remains the hardest part to understand.