HER MARRIAGE COLLAPSED BEFORE HER LIFE DID — THEN PAMELA CISNEROS’ HIDDEN STRUGGLES CAME TO LIGHT

For years, Pamela Cisneros appeared to be living a life far removed from the chaos that would eventually surround her name.

She was a mother. She had earned a master’s degree in psychology. She had worked professionally and, according to her family, had spent years trying to manage serious mental-health struggles.

But behind that résumé was a much more complicated story.

Cisneros’ personal life began to unravel through a combination of family problems, financial hardship and mental-health crises.

Court records show that her marriage eventually collapsed, with divorce proceedings filed in Florida. Her husband filed for divorce in 2020, and the divorce was finalized later.

The breakdown of the marriage was followed by custody difficulties involving her children.

By 2022, court records indicated that Cisneros had left her job at Aflac and was struggling to find employment that matched her professional background.

For someone with a graduate degree in psychology, the sudden loss of career stability was another major blow.

And her family says the problems did not stop there.

Cisneros had already experienced serious mental-health episodes years before the Times Square incident.

In 2018, police reportedly encountered her after an episode in which she was behaving erratically.

Then, in 2019, came an even more alarming crisis involving a New York City subway station. She reportedly attempted, or threatened, to take her own life by jumping in front of a train.

Her family became increasingly concerned.

According to her brother Patrick Peralta, Cisneros had struggled with mental-health problems for decades. He said the family had tried repeatedly to help her and that she had been receiving treatment.

There were also periods when she appeared to become more stable.

That detail makes what happened in Times Square even more difficult for her family to understand.

Because Pamela Cisneros did not simply disappear from society overnight.

She had reportedly been trying to rebuild.

Her family believed she was receiving treatment and taking medication, and her brother said she had seemed relatively stable in recent years.

Then something changed.

Exactly what happened in the period immediately before August 31 remains unclear.

Family members have suggested that she may have stopped taking medication, but that has not been established as the definitive reason for what followed. Mental-health history alone also cannot explain or predict violent behavior.

What is known is that on the afternoon of Aug. 31, 49-year-old Cisneros was in Times Square.

According to police, she approached a 68-year-old man and then Erin Piacenti, a 32-year-old Bank of America vice president who was returning home from her first day back at work following five months of maternity leave.

Piacenti was fatally injured.

The older man survived.

Police later confronted Cisneros near an NYPD substation. She was carrying two large knives and, according to authorities, refused repeated commands to put them down before advancing toward officers.

Officers ultimately fired at her, and she died at the scene.

The NYPD has described the incident as random and unprovoked and said there was no indication it was terrorism-related.

And that leaves the most haunting question unanswered:

What happened to Pamela Cisneros between the woman her family believed was rebuilding her life — and the woman who suddenly appeared in Times Square that afternoon?

Her education, her marriage, her custody struggles, her financial difficulties and her documented mental-health history now form pieces of a timeline investigators and the public are trying to understand.

But they are pieces, not a complete explanation.

Her family says they had tried to help.

Her brother has described the woman he knew as someone who had struggled for years but who had also appeared, at times, to be getting better.

And then, in a matter of minutes in one of the busiest places in New York City, two strangers became victims of a confrontation that would end one life, change another family forever and bring the hidden struggles of Pamela Cisneros into public view.

Meanwhile, Erin Piacenti’s family is left facing a very different future.

The 32-year-old lawyer and Bank of America executive had only recently welcomed her daughter Madison, now five months old. A fundraiser created for the baby’s future has since surpassed $650,000, with thousands of people contributing.

For Erin’s loved ones, there is no mystery about what was lost.

A young mother had gone to work.

She was supposed to come home.

She never did.

And behind the name of the woman accused of ending that ordinary day lies a troubled history that had been unfolding for years — long before Times Square ever heard her name.