SIX YEARS TO END A MARRIAGE — THEN JUST MONTHS BEFORE THE TIMES SQUARE ATTACK, PAMELA CISNEROS SEEMED TO DISAPPEAR FROM HER FAMILY’S LIFE

It took six years to end the marriage.

It took just a few months for Pamela Cisneros’s life to take a turn no one could have imagined.

Pamela’s husband filed for divorce in 2020. The marriage was not officially dissolved until 2025.

By then, Pamela was facing a series of personal struggles — including longstanding mental-health difficulties, professional setbacks and increasing distance from her three children.

She was living alone in Queens.

From the outside, it may have looked as though Pamela was simply trying to rebuild her life after a difficult chapter.

But her family noticed something changing.

The woman they had once seen regularly was becoming harder to reach.

Family gatherings became less frequent. Visits that had once seemed routine began to disappear.

And then came the final week.

“SHE SEEMED FINE”

People close to Pamela later described a woman who had appeared more stable in recent years.

Her family did not expect what would happen next.

According to relatives, Pamela had maintained contact with family members, and there had been no obvious warning that she was about to become involved in a violent incident.

Her brother later said she had appeared stable for years and that he had not known her to be aggressive.

That makes the timeline even harder for those who knew her to understand.

Because shortly before August 31, something changed.

Pamela was no longer showing up in the way she once had.

Her family was calling.

They were checking on her.

And, according to relatives, the answers they received gave them little reason to believe that something catastrophic was approaching.

THEN CAME AUGUST 31

On the afternoon of August 31, Pamela Cisneros entered Times Square.

Within minutes, the lives of multiple families would be permanently changed.

Police said Cisneros attacked two strangers with knives in an apparently random and unprovoked assault.

One of those victims was 68-year-old Tak Kam, who survived.

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

Piacenti had recently welcomed her daughter Madison and had been building a new life with her husband, Frank, in New Jersey.

Instead, she never made it home.

THE QUESTION HER FAMILY CANNOT ESCAPE

Pamela Cisneros died after police confronted her and she advanced toward officers while holding knives.

The NYPD has said Cisneros had a documented mental-health history involving previous encounters with police.

But that history does not, by itself, explain what happened on August 31.

Nor does it answer the question her family is now left asking:

What happened during those final weeks of Pamela Cisneros’s life?

A marriage that had finally ended.

Children who had become increasingly distant.

A woman living alone in Queens.

Family members who said she seemed better.

And then, seemingly without warning, a devastating afternoon in Times Square.

For the people who loved Pamela, the hardest part may be that there was no single moment they could point to and say:

That was when everything changed.

By the time they realized how far she had drifted from the life they knew, it was already too late.