Patricia Cisneros posted about stabbing strangers and spiritual emptiness on Facebook months before her deadly Times Square rampage.
The 49-year-old mother of three, who was killed by police Monday after fatally stabbing a banking executive and wounding another woman, wrote the chilling warnings in rambling, religion-filled posts on the social media platform. Cisneros, of New York, shared the first message on Nov. 30.
“There is news of war, pestilence, earthquakes, the diminished love of people to the point of stabbing others for no reason, sex slavery in this country and around the globe, widespread drug use, persecution of the Christian believer on a global scale, worldwide hunger, homelessness, etc.,” she wrote on Facebook. “You can read it for yourself in the Holy Bible that warns about the end times.”
A month later, Cisneros returned to the platform with a question that now reads as hauntingly self-referential. “Regardless of the circumstance in your life, why do people still feel empty in their spirit and eventually surrender to hopelessness?” she asked in the December post, adding that help could be found in God.
“The current events surrounding you can attest to my previous statement of the end times being present,” Cisneros wrote in the November post.
She also warned her followers about what she described as Satan’s influence. “The enemy of our souls, Satan, knows that his ending is near and would like to take as many souls to hell as possible,” she shared. “This is the reason that some people hear voices to either kill someone or themselves or tell people lies such as you have sinned to much to be accepted by Christ and enter the kingdom of God.”
Amid the dire warnings, Cisneros urged people to follow what she called God’s main commandment. “You love one another just as I have loved you,” she wrote.
The Facebook page also contained older, happier images of Cisneros smiling with family and friends, a stark contrast to the violence that followed. She had reposted a 2020 comment from another user as well: “Always be kind to strangers. You never know what someone is going through.”
On Monday afternoon, Cisneros armed herself with two kitchen knives and launched an apparently random attack in the heart of Manhattan. She first stabbed Tak Kam, 68, of Rhode Island, in the stomach near West 41st Street and Seventh Avenue, according to police. Cisneros then walked one block and fatally stabbed Erin Piacenti, 32, a Bank of America executive from New Jersey. Officers shot and killed Cisneros when she charged at them.
Kam survived the attack. Piacenti did not.