The stunned family of Times Square stabber Pamela Cisneros says she had a decades-long history of mental illness including postpartum depression, multiple hospitalizations — and a suicide attempt in which she threw herself on the subway tracks.
Cisneros, 49, randomly stabbed two strangers, killing one of them, before NYPD officers shot her dead — but her brother Patrick Peralta told the Daily News he never knew her to harm anyone other than herself before Monday’s rampage.
“I don’t know what was in her head,“ Peralta, 59, said Tuesday. “I can’t tell you what she was thinking or if she just completely went blank. I don’t know where that rage came from.”
Peralta, a certified surgical technician, has a different father that Cisneros but the two grew up together with their mother in an apartment in Jackson Heights.
“She was a happy-go-lucky kid,” Peralta recalled. “In summertime, she was my tail because she would follow me around. She was like 5. I went out and played with my friends and she was always with me all the time.”
Her mental health problems developed about two decades ago, after she gave birth to the second of her three daughters.
“She went off track after that,” Peralta said.
Postpartum depression has come into the national spotlight with the Massachusetts trial of Lindsey Clancy, who’s accused of murdering her three children in January 2023. Clancy’s defense lawyer has argued she shouldn’t be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.
On Tuesday, the jury announced it had deadlocked on a verdict, though the judge overseeing the case sent them back for more deliberations.
Cisneros’ middle child is autistic and nonverbal and lives in a group home in Brooklyn, Peralta said. Cisneros would often visit her.
Her other two daughters live in Florida with their father, Pamela’s ex-husband. Peralta had to break the news to those two daughters over the phone Tuesday night.
Cisneros, who has no arrest history in New York, has been hospitalized several times and seven years ago threw herself on the subway tracks in Queens only to be rescued by an onlooker, Peralta said.
“Then she was in Jamaica Hospital,” he said. “Then she went to Bellevue (Hospital) a couple of times. She was seeing doctors.”
Police sources confirm Cisneros jumped onto the tracks on the E train line at the Union Turnpike station on March 6, 2019.
That was one of two mental health crises involving the NYPD, the sources said. In the other incident, cops were called because she was drunk, screaming and acting belligerent at a hotel on Lexington Ave. near E. 49th St. in Midtown East on Dec. 20, 2018.
Because she had trouble taking daily psychiatric medication Cisneros was prescribed monthly injections instead, her brother said.
“For the last six years now, she was getting injections and nothing was wrong,” he said. “As long as she got the medication, she was fine … She never showed any violence towards anybody.”
“She used to go in person (to get the injections) and then I just found out that now she was doing it herself,” he added.
“So I don’t know if she stopped doing it, because my parents are old and are they trying to check to make sure that she was getting injections. That’s the only thing I can suggest, that maybe she didn’t get the last couple of months of injections. Her brain was going all over.”
On Monday, Cisneros pulled two kitchen knives out of a Target bag and stabbed a 68-year-old Rhode Island man in the abdomen near W. 41st St. and Seventh Ave. at 4:24 p.m., cops said. He survived.
Within 20 seconds, she made her way to W. 42nd St. and fatally stabbed 32-year-old Erin Piacenti, a vice president at Bank of America. Police surrounded her near an NYPD substation by W. 43rd St., and Tased then fatally shot her as she advanced on them, swinging a knife in each hand.
“She used to come and eat dinner with my parents mostly every night,” Peralta said. “But last week she didn’t show, so we started calling her to see what was going on.”
Peralta recognized his sister from the viral cell phone videos that made the news showing her final moments.
“I was shocked,” he said. “I’m still numb. I saw it on the news last night. Something told me that she looks like my sister. So I called Midtown South. I give them my info and then by 7:30 (p.m.), they called me back.”
He last saw her for her father’s birthday on Aug, 8. “She was fine. Normal,” he said.
Her mother last talked to her on the phone Saturday.
“(Cisneros) said she was fine,” Peralta recounted. “My mother is devastated.”
Cisneros was living alone in Woodside and had been out of work for a while. But three months ago she landed a job as an administrative assistant for a lawyer, her brother said.
“My entire family feels so sorry for the two people, the one that passed away and the one who was hurt,” Peralta said. “We are so sorry. We never thought this would happen.”
With Rocco Parascandola