NYPD officers shot a woman armed with knives in the middle of Times Square on Monday afternoon, after witnesses say a Taser deployment failed to stop her before she moved toward police with a blade. The shooting happened around 4:27 p.m. near West 43rd Street and Seventh Avenue, one of the most crowded tourist corridors in Manhattan, sending emergency vehicles swarming the area and disrupting subway and street traffic for blocks.
Officers responded to radio reports of a knifepoint robbery and a suspect carrying two knives in the crowded intersection, according to CBS New York. When police confronted the woman, they first tried to disarm her with stun guns, but witnesses said she appeared unaffected and kept advancing on officers with a knife before they opened fire, according to BNO News, which cited witness video showing multiple officers confronting her in the moments before shots were fired.
PIX11 reported that a person armed with a knife was shot in Times Square, citing sources familiar with the incident, and that the circumstances surrounding the shooting were not immediately known. A PIX11 traffic camera showed a heavy emergency response along Seventh Avenue, with more than a dozen police and emergency vehicles lining the street in the aftermath. The outlet described the story as still developing as of Monday evening.
Streets Locked Down as Investigation Begins
In the wake of the shooting, the NYPD advised the public via social media to expect major delays, street closures, and mass transit disruptions around 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue, per the same CBS New York account. Emergency vehicles locked down Seventh Avenue as detectives worked to secure the scene, a chaotic scramble in one of the busiest pedestrian hubs in the country. Key details remain unresolved, including the woman's identity, her medical condition, and whether anyone was harmed before officers arrived, according to reporting from the Mirror.
A Pattern of Knife Confrontations Ending in Gunfire
This is not the first time in recent weeks that NYPD officers have used firearms against a knife-wielding individual. Two weeks earlier, on August 17, officers fatally shot a man armed with a butcher's knife inside a Lower East Side apartment building after he reportedly lunged at them, according to a report from CBS New York. Under New York Penal Law Section 35.15 and NYPD Patrol Guide standards, officers are authorized to use deadly force when they reasonably believe it is necessary to defend themselves or others from imminent deadly physical force, a standard outlined by USCCA that does not strictly require officers to escalate through force levels sequentially when facing an immediate threat.
The apparent failure of the Taser in Monday's confrontation is not unusual. Department reporting cited by investigative outlet The Trace found that NYPD-issued X-26P Tasers fail to effectively subdue suspects in roughly 28 percent of deployments, with heavy clothing or probe disconnects frequently compromising the weapons during high-stress calls. That operational limitation has repeatedly surfaced in New York City police shootings involving edged weapons, including a case examined in Hoodline's Flatbush shower shooting probe, in which a Taser also failed to stop a knife-wielding suspect before officers fired.
Times Square's Recent String of Violence
Monday's shooting adds to a run of violent incidents along the West 43rd Street corridor this year. In May, an unhoused man was fatally stabbed on West 43rd Street, leading to the arrest of a teenager, according to CBS New York. In June, a shooting broke out during Knicks championship celebrations in the same stretch of Times Square, an incident Hoodline covered as Knicks title chaos that left a teen shot amid the mayhem. Earlier Monday, Hoodline also reported a separate subway stabbing near Times Square that left a man wounded and a suspect still at large.
The shooting location falls within the jurisdiction of the NYPD's Midtown South Precinct, which is headquartered on West 35th Street and covers dense commercial landmarks including Times Square, Grand Central Terminal, and Penn Station, according to city records. That precinct has been at the center of a broader citywide tension: a midyear 2026 analysis from Vital City found that felony assaults in New York City have risen for six consecutive years even as murders fell by more than 20 percent in the first half of 2026.
Despite Monday's shooting, NYPD gun discharges by officers remain historically rare. Official use-of-force data show annual police firearms discharge incidents have fallen by more than 68 percent since the department began standardized tracking in 2007, a decline attributed in part to expanded de-escalation protocols and crisis intervention training. Investigators had not released further details on the woman's condition or the outcome of the shooting as of Monday evening.
