Two weeks before Christmas, Macy’s Herald Square was the site of a crime that left a tourist wounded as she fended off an attack while she changing her infant daughter.
On Thursday, the fabled New York City department store was the scene on an unprovoked attack as a woman who had been released from a psychiatric hospital that day stabbed a female tourist from California who was changing her baby in a store bathroom.
Kerri Aherne, 43, who was charged with attempted murder, assault, child endangerment and weapons, had been let out of the Manhattan Psychiatric Center that day, according to the New York Post.
“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 said at a Manhattan court where Aherne was arraigned.
Barker said Aherne was arrested in Massachusetts in 2018 after posting threats concerning Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and other posts about and “getting a gun” for a shooting at a “local police station.”
The incident took place at about 3:10 p.m. in a seventh-floor bathroom where the tourist, a 38-year-old woman who is a civilian employee of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, was changing her 10-month-old daughter.
“In the course of the assault, the baby fell from the table to the floor, but the mother was able to subdue the assailant,” Barker said
The tourist was wounded in the back, shoulder and arm.
The baby’s paternal grandmother said she hopes justice is done, according to the New York Post.
“That person should be in jail for the rest of her life,” the woman said. The Post did not use her name.
“I believe she should go to jail because what she did was not right,” she said.
Justine Silva, a friend of the victim, said she fought back due to “a mom’s instinct.”
“I’m not surprised she did that,” Silva said. “She works out. She’s pretty fit.”
Silva said the family vacation to New York was supposed to Friday, but the family has to stay until Monday due to court proceedings.
“They just had the baby not too long ago and they were just trying to get [away] on holiday. This is their first trip to New York since they had the baby,” Silva said.
In an interview at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island, Aherne blamed her actions on a voice in her head.
JUST IN—Kerri Aherne (43) suspect accused of stabbing a woman changing her baby in @Macys is headed jail, and was denied bail. She was released from Manhattan Psych Center Thursday morning, bought a knife @Macys , and told prosecutors “voices” told her to kill someone @1010WINS pic.twitter.com/VFNdJmkCtY
— Mary-Lyn Buckley (@ml_buckley) December 13, 2025
“It said that I had to go to Macy’s and kill someone,” Kerri Aherne said during an exclusive jailhouse interview Saturday according to the New York Post.
She said she bought the knife used in the stabbing with money given to her by a social worker.
“The voice said, ‘Kill someone in the bathroom or you will die,” she said.
She also alleged she was “being tortured by the government. They put words into my head. They told me that I had to kill or they would kill me.”
“I apologize. Is she OK? I know she had a little baby,” she said. “It’s not my fault. She should be upset with the government. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to kill anyone. It’s not me. It’s the government’s fault. They are telling me to do it and that’s why I want to sue them.”
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