Overview
- An 18-year-old tourist was fatally thrown from a horse-drawn carriage after the horse bolted on June 17, leaving the driver suspended and the horse retired.
- The Transport Workers Union Local 100 paused passenger rides, required mandatory safety retraining for drivers, and plans to resume tours after supervised training runs in Central Park this week.
- Councilmember Christopher Marte announced he will rename his carriage phaseout proposal Romanch’s Law and City Council Speaker Julie Menin scheduled a July 15 hearing to consider the measure.
- Mahajan’s family and animal-welfare advocates demand an immediate ban and criticized plans to restart rides while the union and some council members back a competing bill that would tighten safety, training, and oversight instead of ending the industry.
- The debate is shaped by recent incidents including the necropsy-linked death of a carriage horse named Deniz and a cluster of horse-related events over the past year, and any final decision could affect roughly 68 to 80 drivers and about 100 horses while triggering city programs to retrain workers.