New York City police arrested a homeless woman accused of stabbing a tourist changing her baby at Macy’s Herald Square.
According to New York Post, the homeless women names as Kerri Aherne was released from a psychiatric hospital hours before the attack, and bought the knife she used at the store after hearing “voices” in her head telling her to “kill,” prosecutors revealed.
The 43-year-old had been let out of the Manhattan Psychiatric Center following a year of treatment when she strolled into the iconic Midtown store, purchased the blade and carried out the savage attack against a 38-year-old California mother Thursday afternoon, prosecutors said at her arraignment Friday night.
“She had purchased a knife at Macy’s and looked for someone to kill because voices in her head told her that she had to kill someone or else she would be killed,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Paul Barker told the court.
Aherne was wearing a ragged white sweater and a face mask when she was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on attempted murder, assault, child endangerment and weapons possession charges.
Barker noted that while the alleged knife-wielding fiend had no priors in the Big Apple, she was arrested in her native Massachusetts in 2018 for making online posts threatening to kill Sen. Elizabeth Warren and “getting a gun” to shoot someone at a “local police station.”
It’s unclear why she then began receiving treatment at a separate hospital in Manhattan.
