the death of a carriage horse<\/a> that a preliminary examination showed had eaten a toxic plant, and then with the death of Romanch.<\/p>\nLate Wednesday, Julie Menin, the City Council speaker, and Lynn Schulman, who leads the Council\u2019s health committee, said they would schedule a hearing next month on a bill that would rid the city of carriage horses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe time to act is now,\u201d they said in a social media post.<\/p>\n
A similar ban failed to get a hearing in the Council\u2019s previous term, and neither Ms. Menin, a Manhattan Democrat, nor Ms. Shulman, a Queens Democrat, expressed public support for it then.<\/p>\n
Ms. Menin, in a statement on Thursday, said the deaths of Mr. Mahajan and of the horse, Deniz, \u201cdemonstrate that it\u2019s time to chart a better path forward that addresses animal welfare and public safety, and also ensures the livelihood and economic prosperity of the workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHorse welfare, public safety and the economic future of carriage drivers are not mutually exclusive goals,\u201d she added. \u201cI\u2019m confident that we can bring all parties together to achieve a responsible solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor Zohran Mamdani adopted a similar tone in a statement on Wednesday night, saying he hoped to work with all interested parties \u201cto deliver a just transition that protects workers while ending horse-drawn carriages in Central Park once and for all.\u201d<\/p>\n
But John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union, said in an interview on Thursday that those who want to ban the carriages were exploiting what he and his members agreed was a tragedy to promote their views.<\/p>\n
He said claims that having horses pull carriages is a form of animal cruelty, which have been the primary motivator for ban supporters, were baseless and needed to be \u201cdecoupled\u201d from questions about whatever failures by the carriage driver had led to Mr. Mahajan\u2019s death. The union and its members were committed to addressing those questions, Mr. Samuelsen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to work to ensure safe vehicular traffic of all kinds in the park,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For the Mahajans, the carriage ride was meant to be a relaxing outing on the family\u2019s first visit to New York, a trip that had already included stops at the Statue of Liberty, the 9\/11 Memorial and the Brooklyn Bridge.<\/p>\n
Deepak Mahajan, Romanch\u2019s father, said they were in the park when they booked a ride with the driver, identified as Ertan Gokdepe by a law enforcement official who requested anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation. The union said on Friday that the driver had been on the job for at least 16 years and that he was \u201cextremely distraught\u201d by the recent events. Efforts to reach Mr. Gokdepe were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
The family agreed to pay Mr. Gokdepe $158 for a 45-minute ride with several stops, and his taking three pictures along the way was part of the package, Mr. Mahajan said. He had taken two pictures of the family in the cab at other spots before arriving near the fountain at Cherry Hill at about 2:45 p.m. As he had the previous times, Mr. Gokdepe left the carriage to get the shot.<\/p>\n
The horse, a 7-year-old named Sampson that had been working in the park for only six weeks, bolted a split-second later, Mr. Mahajan said. When his wife, Priya, fell out of the carriage, Romanch jumped down to try to help her, and hit his head on the ground, Mr. Mahajan said.<\/p>\n
The circumstances under which Mr. Gokdepe, who the union said had been suspended indefinitely by the carriage\u2019s owner, was taking pictures is likely to draw scrutiny.<\/p>\n
Mr. Kemp, the union vice president, said on Wednesday that what Mr. Gokdepe had done was \u201cunacceptable\u201d and that \u201ca driver is not supposed to leave the carriage to take photos \u2014 ever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miles G. Cohen, Chelsia Rose Marcius, Maia Coleman, Andy Newman and Davaughnia Wilson contributed reporting. Georgia Gee contributed research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Horse-drawn carriages, a fixture in Central Park since its creation, will remain out of commission this weekend, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[21612,72891,1910,23665,11634,9,24,11,10,56,8397],"class_list":["post-272365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-carriages","tag-central-park-manhattan","tag-city-council-nyc","tag-falls","tag-horses","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-ny","tag-transport-workers-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272365","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=272365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}