An 18-year-old visitor has died after a carriage horse broke loose, careened down a Central Park drive and overturned the carriage he was riding in on Wednesday — the second carriage-horse tragedy in the park in just over a week.
The victim was identified by the Central Park Conservancy as Romanch Mahajan. He was inside the carriage when the horse was startled and tipped it over near 71st Street and Center Drive at 2:47 p.m., according to the NYPD. He was rushed to Weill Cornell Medical Center in critical condition and later died.
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The Conservancy, the nonprofit that runs the park, said the horse bolted from its driver at Cherry Hill near 72nd Street and West Drive, ran down West Drive and collided with another carriage before flipping over near Tavern on the Green — a sequence captured on video. By the group’s count, there have now been eight horse-related incidents in the park over the past 13 months.The death comes only a week after a 16-year-old carriage horse named Deniz collapsed and died near West 72nd Street, an episode a Cornell necropsy later traced to a toxic shrub the animal had eaten. Together, the two events have intensified a long-running fight over whether the carriage trade belongs in the park at all.
“We are absolutely devastated,” a Conservancy spokesperson said in a statement, extending condolences to Mahajan’s family. “A young man came to enjoy our park and lost his life. That is not an acceptable cost of an antiquated industry operating in the middle of one of the most heavily used public spaces in America.”
The Conservancy, which first called for a carriage ban last year, renewed that push on Wednesday. “We renew our call for New York City to pass Ryder’s Law, which would ban horse carriages and provide transitional job placement services for drivers,” the spokesperson said. “Every day horse carriages are in the park is a day the safety of New Yorkers and visitors is in jeopardy.”
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Animal rights advocates echoed the call. PETA Director Ashley Byrne said the latest incident was one disaster too many. “From collapsing horses to careening carriages, how many more disasters have to strike before we get these beleaguered horses out of the park?” Byrne said. “For everyone’s safety, PETA is calling on council members, Health Committee Chair Lynn Schulman, and Speaker Julie Menin to stop dithering and pass Ryder’s Law immediately.”Ryder’s Law — named for a horse that collapsed on a Midtown street in 2022 — would phase out horse-drawn carriages and replace them with electric ones. An earlier version of the bill was defeated by the City Council, but Councilmember Chris Marte said he would reintroduce it following Deniz’s death.
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