An 18-year-old tourist from India is dead after a Central Park carriage horse bolted while its driver stood outside the buggy to snap photos, and animal-rights organizations are now pressing New York City's democratic socialist mayor to shut down the iconic rides for good by executive order.
Romanch Mahajan was thrown to the ground when the horse took off Wednesday near Cherry Hill at West 72nd Street. The city medical examiner's office determined his cause of death was blunt force trauma. His family has since returned to India.
By Friday, the Transport Workers Union of America Local 100 had suspended all passenger carriage rides through the weekend for what it called a safety stand-down. Animal-rights advocates seized the moment to demand Mayor Zohran Mamdani make that suspension permanent, a step the mayor has rhetorically supported but has not taken.
The fatal sequence, as the New York Post reported, began when carriage driver Ertan Gokdepe left his seat to photograph tourists in the buggy. The horse, a six-week veteran of the park named Sampson, according to Breitbart, bolted without warning. Mahajan was thrown. The buggy crashed.
Leaving the carriage to take photos is a violation of safety rules. TWU Local 100 administrative vice president Alexander Kemp acknowledged the breach plainly:
"A driver is not supposed to leave the carriage to take photos, ever. We support a full investigation."
Gokdepe has been suspended indefinitely. The horse Sampson will be retired. When a reporter visited Gokdepe at his Queens home Friday afternoon and asked whether he had a message for the grieving family, he said only: "Rest in peace."
Mahajan's father, Deepak Mahajan, told the Associated Press: "This incident should be taken very seriously. It took my son's dream away."
The death was not an isolated event. It marked the eighth horse-related incident in and around Central Park over the past 13 months, Fox News reported. Just one week before Mahajan died, a carriage horse named Deniz collapsed and died after eating a toxic plant in the park, an episode we previously covered in detail.
Before that, a horse named Ryder collapsed on the job in August 2022 and was later euthanized. That incident gave its name to Ryder's Law, the City Council legislation that would ban horse-drawn carriage rides in Central Park altogether.
The Central Park Conservancy, which maintains the park, renewed its call for a ban. A Conservancy spokesperson said, as the Washington Times reported: "This is the tragedy we feared when we first called last year for horse carriages to be banned from Central Park due to the risks they pose to public safety and public health."
The Conservancy added: "Every day horse carriages are in the park is a day the safety of New Yorkers and visitors is in jeopardy."
Edita Birnkrant, head of New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets, told the Post on Friday that the mayor should not wait for the City Council to act. She framed the risk in blunt terms:
"No amount of regulation or reform can eliminate the risk by a 2,000-pound animal hard-wired to flee when frightened from bolting and claiming another life."
Birnkrant demanded an immediate, permanent shutdown: "There must not be one more turn of a horse-drawn carriage wheel in New York City ever again."
PETA piled on, calling on Mamdani to halt all 68 carriages through executive order while the Council considers Ryder's Law. The organization's statement was pointed: "The fatal carriage incident this week, just one week after a horse named Deniz collapsed and died, was completely preventable, and is what happens when City Council sits on its hands and does nothing."
Here is the uncomfortable part for City Hall. Mayor Mamdani has supported banning horse-drawn carriages since his campaign. He took office in January. As recently as June 10, just days before Mahajan's death, he said he would work to "deliver a just transition that protects workers while ending horse-drawn carriages in Central Park once and for all."
Yet as of Friday, no executive order had been issued. The Mamdani administration did not return a message seeking comment.
That gap between rhetoric and action is becoming a pattern for this mayor. Mamdani has reversed course on police hiring despite campaign pledges, and his political instincts have not always matched results, his handpicked candidate was crushed in a Greenwich Village council race earlier this year.
The question now is whether Mamdani will use the executive authority his allies are begging him to exercise, or whether he will wait for the Council to move at its own pace, a pace that, based on the record, has not been fast.
TWU Local 100 moved quickly to suspend rides and express condolences, but it also defended the broader industry. Kemp noted that carriage rides have been part of Central Park since it opened in 1858, and that the city issued the first carriage horse medallions in the late 1940s.
"This is believed to be the first passenger fatality in all that time, but we are committed to a Vision Zero approach where we do all that we can, collaborating with the City, to improve safety and prevent any accidents from occurring as we move forward."
The union's safety stand-down runs through Sunday, with drivers attending meetings to review protocols. Monday will bring refresher training in the park with carriages but no passengers. Rides are expected to resume Tuesday.
Kemp also called for the NYC Department of Health to conduct more consistent check-ins and enforcement at the park, and said the union wants to work with city officials to identify proper spots for hitching and tethering horses. It is a posture of cooperation, and an implicit acknowledgment that the current system has gaps.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin, an Upper East Side Democrat, announced Friday that she was scheduling a July 15 hearing on Ryder's Law. She called Mahajan's death "a horrific tragedy" and said "the status quo is no longer acceptable."
That hearing will involve stakeholders focused on public safety, animal welfare, and carriage drivers' livelihoods. But July 15 is nearly a month away, and the carriages are set to roll again on Tuesday.
The timeline exposes a familiar dysfunction. A young man dies. Officials express sympathy. Advocates demand action. The union pledges reform. A hearing gets scheduled weeks out. And the underlying question, whether 2,000-pound animals pulling tourist buggies through one of the world's busiest urban parks is an acceptable risk, gets deferred again.
Mamdani has drawn fire from his own party on other fronts this year. On this issue, though, the pressure is coming from his natural allies, animal-rights groups and progressive organizations that helped put him in office. They are not asking him to do something he opposes. They are asking him to do what he already said he would do.
Romanch Mahajan came to New York City as a tourist. He climbed into a carriage in Central Park, one of the most recognizable experiences the city offers visitors. A driver broke the rules. A horse ran. And an 18-year-old from India went home in a casket.
Whether the answer is an outright ban, tighter enforcement, or some structural overhaul, the current arrangement has now produced a body count. The mayor who promised to end the carriage trade has the authority his supporters say he needs. The question is whether he will use it, or whether the next tragedy will arrive before the next hearing.
Promises are easy in a campaign speech. Governing means choosing, and accepting the cost of delay when the cost is measured in lives, not votes.
