18-Year-Old Dies in Fall From Horse Carriage in Central Park

The Mahajan family’s first trip to New York from their home in India had been a whirlwind. They had taken in the Statue of Liberty and the 9/11 Memorial and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. Now on a near-summer Wednesday afternoon in Central Park, the family was relaxing with a leisurely ride in an old-fashioned horse-drawn carriage.

Near the fountain at Cherry Hill in the park, the driver stopped to take a family portrait of 18-year-old Romanch Mahajan, his parents and his little brother. The driver stepped away from the red-and-white carriage to frame the shot, Deepak Mahajan, Romanch’s father, said.

In an instant, the horse bolted. It tore up onto the sidewalk and bumped onto the grass, accelerating crazily, the driver racing behind.

“We were yelling, ‘Help me, help me!” Mr. Mahajan said. The family clung desperately to one another, but when Mr. Mahajan’s wife, Priya, fell out of the carriage, Romanch jumped down to try to help her, he said.

“My son, just to save his mother, he fell off,” said Mr. Mahajan, 44. “He was screaming, ‘Mom!’”

Romanch hit his head on the ground and lay still.

He died Wednesday night at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center. The rest of the family escaped with minor injuries, though their carriage clipped another carriage and toppled over, shattering into pieces.

The accident, which occurred around 2:45 p.m., was the latest in a very long series of mishaps involving carriage horses.

The union that represents carriage drivers said it never should have happened.

“It appears the driver was at least at arm’s length from his horse,” Alexander Kemp, a vice president of the union, Transport Workers Union Local 100, said in a statement. “This is unacceptable. A driver is not supposed to leave the carriage to take photos — ever. We support a full investigation.”

He said the horse, a 7-year-old named Sampson who appeared to be uninjured, had been working in the park for only six weeks and will be retired. The driver, whose name was not immediately released, has been suspended indefinitely by the carriage’s owner, Mr. Kemp added.

The accident immediately led to renewed calls from animal advocates, elected officials and the Central Park Conservancy, which runs the park, to ban carriages from the park. There are more than 100 carriage horses in Manhattan.

“We cannot allow this to be treated as another isolated incident,” City Councilman Christopher Marte, who has introduced a bill to ban carriages at the end of next year, said in a statement. “The Council must act with the urgency this tragedy demands.”

The City Council speaker, Julie Menin, announced Wednesday night that the Council would take up Mr. Marte’s bill next month.

The park conservancy said that there had been eight “horse-related incidents” in or near the park since May 2025, including one last month where a horse hit another carriage and caused it to tip over, and one in January where a horse ran into oncoming traffic and hit several cars. Last week, a carriage horse named Deniz died after eating Japanese yew, a plant that is toxic to horses, in the park.

Both the conservancy and NYCLASS, which has waged a yearslong effort to end the carriage-horse trade, said the death was the first human fatality in a horse carriage accident they were aware of.

“We were on the steps of City Hall last week saying somebody was going to die,” Edita Birnkrant, the executive director of NYCLASS, said. “Now it has happened.”

NYCLASS called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has said he supports removing carriage horses from the park, to issue an executive order banning them immediately.

Mr. Mamdani called the death a “horrific incident” in a statement on Wednesday night. “I look forward to working with City Council, union partners, carriage drivers, animal welfare advocates and community leaders to deliver a just transition that protects workers while ending horse-drawn carriages in Central Park once and for all,” the mayor said.

The park conservancy, which long avoided taking a position on carriage horses but began calling for them to be banned last year, said it was devastated to hear of Mr. Mahajan’s death.

“A young man came to enjoy our park and lost his life,” the conservancy said in a statement. “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.”

Videos posted on X show the carriage dashing around a corner and then, seconds later, hitting the other carriage and tipping over.

Early Wednesday evening, the carriage was still overturned on West Drive, its front wheels broken off its body.

Mr. Mahajan said the family had booked a once-in-a-lifetime trip to celebrate Romanch’s graduation from high school. On Monday, the day they arrived in New York, he learned he had been accepted to Manipal University Jaipur, which his father called one of the best universities in India.

“This incident should be taken very seriously,” Mr. Mahajan said. “It took my son’s dream away.”

Ed Shanahan contributed reporting.