{"id":307198,"date":"2026-07-28T00:17:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T00:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/307198\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T00:17:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T00:17:12","slug":"family-of-teen-killed-by-runaway-central-park-horse-carriage-plans-to-sue-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/307198\/","title":{"rendered":"Family of teen killed by runaway Central Park horse carriage plans to sue city"},"content":{"rendered":"

The family of the 18-year-old Indian tourist who was killed last month in a Central Park carriage horse crash<\/a> announced plans on Monday to sue the city over his death.<\/p>\n

Romanch Mahajan, 18, was visiting New York City from India with family and was thrown from the carriage after the horse pulling it through Central Park bolted. The June incident marked the first death of a carriage passenger in at least five decades and has fueled longstanding calls to ban the industry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ali Najmi, the attorney representing the family, said the death was preventable and the city failed to make the park safe for horses or provide basic equine-oriented infrastructure like hitching posts.<\/p>\n

Najmi, who has also served as a campaign attorney for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, did not specify when he planned to file the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Mahajan\u2019s family members gathered at the park\u2019s Cherry Hill Fountain, where his carriage driver lost control of the horse.<\/p>\n

Mahajan\u2019s father, Deepak, addressed the memorial via phone from India and said his son was a vegetarian and animal lover who has now “sacrificed his life for the animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sneha Choudhary, a spokesperson for the mayor\u2019s office, did not address the lawsuit directly in a statement following the family\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur heart goes out to the Mahajan family, and we are deeply troubled by the heartbreaking tragedy they have experienced,\u201d Choudhary wrote.<\/p>\n

Edita Birnkrant, executive director of the animal rights group NYCLASS, said carriage drivers are still flouting the rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a split second for a horse to spook and bolt and kill someone, as we learned last month,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Christina Hansen, a carriage driver and shop steward for the Transport Workers Union, said she agreed with the family\u2019s claim that the city is at fault for a lack of safety infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Hansen pushed back against legislation before the City Council effort that would ban carriage horses from the park. A majority of councilmembers have backed the measure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe silent majority of people, we see it all the time out here, people come up to us and say, ‘I hope they don’t ban you. It’s not fair,\u201d she said. \u201cThe fact of the matter is that the amount of ignorance about our business and how our business works is astounding.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The family of the 18-year-old Indian tourist who was killed last month in a Central Park carriage horse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-307198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307198","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=307198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}