Bank of America VP Fatally Stabbed in Times Square Attack
Left 67%
Center 0%
Right 33%
2 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
On August 31, Erin Piacenti, 32, a Bank of America vice president on the firm’s Business Selection and Conflicts team, was fatally stabbed in the abdomen near West 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue in Times Square on her first day back from five months of maternity leave with her newborn daughter, Madison. New York City police described the attack as unprovoked and apparently random; Pamela Cisneros, 49, also stabbed a 68-year-old man, who was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition. Officers encountered Cisneros holding two large knives, said she advanced toward them, and shot her; she was pronounced dead at Bellevue, and the NYPD’s Force Investigation Division is reviewing the police shooting. Piacenti had been at the bank about 18 months; her family said they were devastated, requested privacy, and asked that people donate to a GoFundMe for her daughter.
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage leaves out how police stopped the attacker and that the shooting is under review, so readers never see the last minutes of the Times Square attack. Right-leaning coverage in Fox Business describes Cisneros advancing toward officers with two large knives and adds that the Force Investigation Division is reviewing the shooting. Left-leaning coverage in Business Insider instead says officers "shot and killed her at the scene" and does not mention a review.
Left-leaning coverage leads with the charity drive for the baby, while right-leaning coverage leads with the family's grief and the facts of the stabbing. The GoFundMe total sits in the Business Insider headline. Right-leaning coverage never states how much has been raised.
Why did Pamela Cisneros stab strangers in Times Square, and what was known about her?
Bottom line
If you read only Business Insider, you would not know the NYPD is investigating the police shooting of the woman who stabbed Erin Piacenti.
The receipts — 6 facts one side's coverage lacks
- The NYPD Force Investigation Division is reviewing the police shooting of Pamela Cisneros
- A 68-year-old man was also stabbed and taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition
- Cisneros was taken to Bellevue Hospital and pronounced dead after officers shot her
- GoFundMe for the infant daughter raised almost $750,000
- Piacenti was fatally stabbed in the abdomen
- Death compared to the killing of Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner a year earlier
The Left View
Business Insider treated the killing primarily as a personal and professional loss that produced a large private outpouring of support. It used Piacenti’s path through the University of Pennsylvania, Fordham Law School, Davis Polk, and Bank of America as “a glimpse into her life,” and reported that a GoFundMe for her daughter raised almost $750,000 from more than 6,700 contributors. Institutional voices in the coverage called the death “tragic” and “senseless”; the articles added that, though different in circumstance, it came just over a year after a gunman killed Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner at her office, and that both events “shook Wall Street’s sense of safety and sparked an outpouring of support.”
The Right View
Fox Business led with a family “devastated” after an “apparently random” attack on a new mother who had just returned to work. It quoted the family’s GoFundMe that becoming a mother was Erin’s “lifelong ambition,” that she and her husband “were preparing to build a life together with their new daughter,” and that “That life changed incomprehensibly in an instant.” The piece also stressed the police confrontation and the Force Investigation Division review, and closed on the family’s insistence that “Erin’s life was defined not by the circumstances of her death, but instead by the way she lived.”
Our Take (balanced)
Left-leaning coverage’s strongest claim is that the death registered as a shock to a professional community, evidenced by the GoFundMe’s rapid haul and Business Insider’s pairing of the stabbing with the earlier killing of Wesley LePatner as events that “shook Wall Street’s sense of safety.” Right-leaning coverage’s strongest claim is that the violence was sudden and indiscriminate in a public place, evidenced by police calling the attack apparently random and unprovoked and by the family’s line that life “changed incomprehensibly in an instant.” The central unresolved tension is whether the story’s meaning lies mainly in a workplace community’s grief and solidarity or in the unpredictability of random street violence—and the sources do not settle which frame should predominate.
3 sources
- A GoFundMe raises more than $650,000 for newborn daughter of BofA employee Erin Piacenti killed in Times Square stabbing
- A GoFundMe raises almost $750,000 for newborn daughter of BofA employee Erin Piacenti killed in Times Square stabbing
- Family of slain Bank of America vice president 'devastated' after Times Square attack
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