The homeless woman who faces a stabbing charge in California claimed that “voices” in her head told her to “kill” the mother at a Macy’s Herald Square bathroom.
“Kerri Aherne said in a jailhouse interview that the voices told her she had to go to Macy’s and kill someone,” she told The Post on Saturday.
Aherne—who had blood on her fingernails when she sat in the visitors’ hall at Rikers Island’s Rose M. Singer Center, where she’s being held on an attempted murder charge—laid out the incident in chilling detail.
The 43‑year‑old former home‑health aide from Massachusetts took a green cab from the Manhattan Psychiatric Center’s transitional unit to the famous department store. She bought a slick, foot‑long kitchen knife on the eighth floor, paying $150 she received from a social worker before leaving.
She then moved to the seventh floor, where the voice said, “Kill someone in the bathroom or you will die.”
She entered a bathroom and saw a woman changing a baby. “I stabbed her in the back,” she recounted.
The victim screamed for help, shouting for someone to call 911. “I was covered in blood,” Aherne added.
She told the reporters that she’s heard these voices since she was six and that she’s also charged with assault, child endangerment and weapons possession.
“I’m being tortured by the government,” she insisted. “They put words into my head. They told me that I had to kill or they would kill me.”
She said, “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.”
Prosecutors say the attack took place around 3:10 p.m. Thursday in a seventh‑floor bathroom at the Midtown flagship. The 38‑year‑old tourist was there with her 10‑month‑old daughter to change the baby. The child was unharmed, and the mother managed to subdue the attacker before emergency services arrived.
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