A woman randomly stabbed two people in New York City’s Times Square on Monday, killing one woman, and then was fatally shot by police, according to officials.
The shooting happened just before 4:30 p.m. next to a New York Police Department substation, just outside One Times Square, the building that hosts the city’s annual New Year’s Eve ball drop celebration. It is one of the most heavily touristed and policed spots in all of New York.
The 49-year-old woman from Queens pulled out two knives from a shopping bag and stabbed a 68-year-old man who had just come out of the subway station and was waiting to cross the street with his wife, striking him in the abdomen, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference.
Seconds later, the woman stabbed a 32-year-old woman also in the abdomen, Tisch said. Both victims were taken to the hospital. The woman died and the man is in stable condition, according to police.
Police didn’t say if the victims were tourists visiting the city or residents.
Videos posted on social media show a group of at least 10 officers gathered around the woman, who was holding two large kitchen knives.
Officers tried to convince the woman to drop the knives for several minutes before using a Taser, Tisch said. The woman told them: “I’m not dropping anything, I would rather kill both of you,” according to Tisch.
The video shows the Taser not incapacitating her and the woman walking quickly toward the officers while waving the knives in front of her.
Two officers then shot the woman, according to police. In the video posted by bystanders, the woman fell to the ground, where an officer handcuffed her. Officers rolled her onto her back and rendered first aid.
“This was an extraordinarily dangerous situation unfolding in the heart of Times Square, the crossroads of the world,” Tisch said.
The woman has a “documented mental health history with the NYPD,” which include incidents in 2018 and 2019 but no arrest history with the department, Tisch said. She didn't provide additional details.
Police are investigating. Tisch said there was no evidence suggesting it was a terrorist attack.
The names of the victims have not been released until next of kin are notified, according to police.
“We know that those families’ lives have been shattered by what took place today, and we will continue to hold them close as the hours and days and weeks continue from this moment," said Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Both Mamdani and Tisch praised the officers, saying more people could have been hurt or killed if not for their actions.
The NYPD temporarily closed part of 7th Avenue and warned the public to stay away from the area. Police tape cordoned off the area as a large group of law enforcement officers worked nearby.
Violent crime has fallen sharply in New York City so far this year, with homicides down 24% and on pace to potentially hit their lowest level in decades. But this is the second killing this year in Times Square. A man was fatally stabbed in the same area in May.
This image made from video provided by WABC shows NYPD officers on the scene after a woman brandishing two large knives was shot by officers in Times Square in New York, Monday, Aug. 31, 2026. (WABC via AP)
This image made from video provided by WABC-TV shows NYPD officers on the scene after a woman brandishing two large knives was shot by officers in Times Square in New York, Monday, Aug. 31, 2026. (WABC via AP)
This image made from video provided by WABC shows NYPD officers on the scene after a woman brandishing two large knives was shot by officers in Times Square in New York, Monday, Aug. 31, 2026. (WABC via AP)
ATLANTA (AP) — Former U.S. President Joe Biden writes in his White House memoir that Donald Trump, at once his predecessor and successor, has deeply damaged the country and world with an administration determined to “tear down institutions and inflame hatreds.”
And the 83-year-old Democrat said the 80-year-old Trump's years of lies about his 2020 defeat to Biden and the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol should “follow him to his grave.”
Biden's sweeping indictment comes in the first excerpt of “Promise Me, America,” published Monday by The Atlantic. The 46th president's full memoir is set for a Nov. 17 release. Biden said that while doctors are encouraged by his response to cancer treatment, his activities promoting the book will be limited because of his health.
“Donald Trump led an insurrection," Biden wrote of the attack by Trump supporters as the U.S. Congress met to certify the 2020 election won by the Democrat. "His goal was to remain in power after the American people had voted him out of office.
“The rioters weren’t ‘peaceful protesters," he wrote. “They came armed to stop the official certification of a legitimate election.” He chided Trump for later issuing more than 1,500 pardons of the offenders.
“To this day, Trump and his supporters continue to preen and posture like they’re supporters of law enforcement,” Biden wrote. “Here’s my view: You don’t get to turn a blind eye to cops being punched, speared, sprayed, and brutalized and call yourself a friend of law enforcement. What Trump did on January 6, 2021, should never be forgotten. It should follow him to his grave.”
Biden also laments Trump's Department of Government Efficiency and his aggressive reversal of many of his policies, especially those intended to address climate change.
“All presidents must confront a feeling that their legacy is vulnerable to the pendulum of politics and the whims of their successors,” Biden wrote. “In my case, that feeling was magnified by the dismissive and destructive nature of Donald Trump, who seemed unable to tolerate the idea that someone else’s accomplishments might be worth building on rather than tearing down.”
The memoir's release comes on the heels of Biden's fellow Democrats trouncing Republicans in the midterm elections, securing stunningly broad House and Senate majorities and flipping control of several statehouses in a comprehensive rebuke of Trump's second presidency. But Trump's return to power two years earlier was itself a rejection of Biden's one White House term, and many voters still harbor skeptical views of his presidency and his party.
In a lengthy social media post on Sunday, Biden pitched his memoir as the best way he can explain his presidency, “the challenges we faced, the decisions I made and why I made them.”
During his four years in office, Biden confronted the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout, and he worked to restore global alliances that Trump frayed. But he faced widespread concerns about his age, and he abandoned his reelection bid after a disastrous June 2024 debate with Trump. Dogged by lingering inflation and other concerns, Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, lost to Trump that November.
Months after leaving office, Biden announced that he'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He opened up about his condition in his Sunday social media post, saying he “won’t be able to do as many conversations about my book as I’d hoped” and urging people to let the book speak for him.
Biden said his doctors “continue to be encouraged by how I've responded to treatment.” But, he acknowledged, “Some days are better than others. It hasn't stopped me. But sometimes it slows me down.”
In the excerpt, Biden recounts an unusual Oval Office meeting with Trump days after the 2020 election — well before the Jan. 6 riots.
“‘You know, Joe, if it weren't for politics, I believe we'd be good friends,’” Trump said, according to Biden.
Trump even commented "that he’d been relieved he didn’t have to run against me," Biden added.
Public polling at the time Biden dropped his reelection bid showed him trailing Trump, and Democrats pushed for him to yield out of fear that he could not win.
Biden said he used the meeting to give Trump “a tour of the world,” including the Ukraine-Russia war, NATO alliances, Israel and Gaza and China-U.S. relations. Biden said Trump “focused on the personalities” of world leaders rather than the substance of international relations.
He said that two-hour meeting left him worried Trump would indeed dismantle much of his presidency. He wrote that Trump's opening weeks — his Day One executive orders and everything that followed — confirmed his worries about a “crueler government” that “tried to tear down institutions and inflame hatreds” and a president who “took a wrecking ball to our traditions.”
The memoir's title echoes an earlier Biden book, “Promise Me, Dad,” that he wrote about his son Beau's cancer and death — a parallel that implicitly acknowledges the former president's age, condition and the reality that he may not have a long post-presidency to see the direction of the country and the evolution of his legacy.
In that first book, released between Biden's vice presidency and his 2020 presidential bid, he explained that the title came directly from a father-son conversation around Thanksgiving in 2014.
“Promise me, Dad. Give me your word that no matter what happens, you’re going to be all right,” Biden recalled Beau saying. Beau Biden died six months later.
In his Sunday post, Biden repeated an argument he made often when campaigning and during his presidency, saying the U.S. is unique because it was “built on an idea” that “all of us are created equal.”
“Promise me, America,” he concluded, that “we'll never forget it.”
FILE - President-elect Donald Trump and Melania Trump are greeted by President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, upon their arrival at the White House, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
FILE - President Joe Biden walks out to speak in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Nov. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)
FILE - Former President Joe Biden speaks to the South Carolina Democratic Party, Feb. 27, 2026, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley, File)
FILE - President Joe Biden waits to speak about foreign policy at the State Department in Washington, Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
FILE - President Joe Biden meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House, Nov. 13, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
