A homeless woman has been accused of stabbing a mother in a Macy’s bathroom in California while the woman was changing her baby. In a recent interview, Kelly Ahern claimed that a “voice” urged her to “kill her.”
“They told me I had to go to Macy’s and kill someone,” Ahern stated during a Saturday interview at the jail.
In the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island, where she is being held on suspicion of attempted murder, Ahern, who still had traces of blood under her fingernails, recounted the incident in a disturbing way.
The 43-year-old, who previously worked as a home health aide in Massachusetts, said she traveled from her temporary housing at a Manhattan psychiatric center to Macy’s in a green taxi.
Before leaving, she bought a smooth kitchen knife about a foot long, spending $150 she had received from a social worker on the eighth floor.
Ahern then mentioned that she proceeded to the seventh floor.
“The voice said, ‘Kill people in the toilet or you die.’”
Upon entering the bathroom, she saw a woman with her baby. “I stabbed her in the back,” Ahern recounted.
The victim “started screaming for help,” calling for someone to dial 911.
“I was covered in blood,” Ahern added.
Ahern claimed to have been hearing such voices since she was six and is also facing charges related to assault, child endangerment, and weapons possession.
“I am being tortured by the government,” she alleged. “They forced words into my head. They said if I don’t kill them, I will be killed.”
Ahern insisted, “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’re telling me to do it, so I want to sue them.”
According to prosecutors, the incident took place around 3:10 p.m. Thursday inside the bathroom on the seventh floor of the Midtown store, where a 38-year-old tourist was changing her 10-month-old daughter.
Fortunately, the baby was unharmed, and the mother managed to fend off the attacker until help arrived.
