It was a near-summer Wednesday afternoon in Central Park, and an 18-year-old visiting New York from India was doing what so many tourists in New York City want to do: taking a ride in an old-fashioned horse-drawn carriage.<\/p>\n
He and three other passengers climbed into the red-and-white compartment. Mid-ride, the driver stepped away from the carriage to take a photo of the group, according to the carriage drivers\u2019 union.<\/p>\n
At that moment, the horse bolted. It tore up onto the sidewalk and bumped onto the grass, accelerating crazily, the driver racing behind. The horse rounded a corner, and a passenger fell out of the carriage.<\/p>\n
After clipping another horse carriage, the out-of-control carriage toppled over, shattering into pieces.<\/p>\n
The 18-year-old, identified by three law enforcement officials as Romanch Mahajan, sustained a head injury. Wednesday evening, he died at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, those officials said. (All spoke anonymously to discuss an ongoing investigation.)<\/p>\n
The accident, which happened around 2:45 p.m., was the latest in a very long series of mishaps involving carriage horses.<\/p>\n
The drivers\u2019 union said it never should have happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt appears the driver was at least at arm\u2019s length from his horse,\u201d Alexander Kemp, a vice president of the union, Transport Workers Union Local 100, said in a statement. \u201cThis is unacceptable. A driver is not supposed to leave the carriage to take photos \u2014 ever. We support a full investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the horse, a 7-year-old named Sampson who appeared to be uninjured, had been working in the park for only six weeks. The driver\u2019s name was not immediately released.<\/p>\n
The accident immediately led to renewed calls from animal advocates, elected officials and the Central Park Conservancy, which runs the park, to ban carriages from the park. There are more than 100 carriage horses<\/a> in Manhattan.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is yet another serious and terrifying incident involving a carriage horse in Central Park, and it should make clear to everyone that delay is no longer defensible,\u201d City Councilman Christopher Marte, who has introduced a bill<\/a> to ban carriages at the end of next year, said in a statement.<\/p>\n Edita Birnkrant, the executive director of NYCLASS, which has waged a yearslong effort to end the carriage-horse trade, said that the accident was \u201cthe perfect example of why there is no amount of regulation or reform that will stop these horses from spooking and putting lives at risk, their own and the public.\u201d<\/p>\n The park conservancy said that there had been eight \u201chorse-related incidents\u201d in or near the park since May 2025, including one last month where a horse hit another carriage<\/a> and caused it to tip over and one in January where a horse ran into oncoming traffic<\/a> and hit several cars. Last week, a carriage horse named Deniz died after eating Japanese yew<\/a>, a plant that is toxic to horses, in the park.<\/p>\n Ms. Birnkrant said the death was the first human fatality in a horse carriage accident that NYCLASS was aware of.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were on the steps of City Hall last week saying somebody was going to die,\u201d she said. \u201cNow it has happened.\u201d<\/p>\n NYCLASS called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has said he supports removing carriage horses from the park<\/a>, to issue an executive order banning them immediately.<\/p>\n Videos posted on X show the carriage dashing around a corner<\/a> and then, seconds later, hitting the other carriage<\/a> and toppling.<\/p>\n Early Wednesday evening, the carriage was still overturned on West Drive, its front wheels broken off its body.<\/p>\n Christina Hansen, a carriage driver and a spokeswoman for the drivers\u2019 union, said that when she got to the scene around 3 p.m., she found Sampson still connected to the horse shafts. \u201cHe was a little worked up, but he was standing there quietly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Md Shafi Islam, 58, who operates an ice cream and hot-dog stand near where the crash happened, said he had seen a carriage, with two young passengers inside, speeding up West Drive.<\/p>\n \u201cThe horse was going so fast \u2014 he was running and running,\u201d Mr. Islam said.<\/p>\n But Mr. Islam said he hadn\u2019t seen a driver sitting in the carriage.<\/p>\n \u201cMy God \u2014 I was thinking this is going to be a bad accident,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n About 10 seconds later he saw the driver running after the carriage, before it veered east into the park and out of sight.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was fast, but the horse was faster,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a near-summer Wednesday afternoon in Central Park, and an 18-year-old visiting New York from India was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[21612,72891,31679,11634,9,11,10,56],"class_list":["post-270263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-carriages","tag-central-park-manhattan","tag-central-park-conservancy","tag-horses","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}