The parents of a teenager who tumbled to his death from a breakaway horse carriage in Central Park last month will this week plead with the City Council to banish the tourist trade from the park.
A Wednesday hearing on the future of horse-drawn rides that have been Central Park fixtures since the 1860s follows the June 17 death of Romanch Mahajan, whose loved ones plan to testify remotely from India about their quest to have New York City join other cities that have outlawed horse carriages.
“Our family is completely shattered,” said Gaurav Mahajan, an uncle of the 18-year-old tourist, a recent high school graduate. “We are living in a state of profound shock and agony that we may never truly be able to overcome.”
The teen’s death marked the eighth time since May 2025 that horses in the park have been involved in on-the-job incidents — with the most recent marking a potential turning point in the contentious, long-running campaign to phase out the carriages.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Councilmember Lynn Schulman (D-Queens) called for the hearing on a bill from Councilmember Christopher Marte (D-Manhattan) to ban horses from the park.
Tourist Romanch Mahajan was killed in Central Park after he fell from a runaway horse carriage, June 22, 2026. Credit: Jose Martinez/The City Reporter
“We truly believe a ban on this dangerous industry is closer than ever,” Mahajan said.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has also said it’s time for the horses to go, following a path taken by his two most recent predecessors at City Hall, Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio. Any ban would have to be done in tandem with the City Council and would follow the lead of Philadelphia, San Antonio and Montreal.
“They had the political courage to say, ‘All right, it’s 2026, we don’t need this anymore,” Marte said.
His proposal — newly renamed as “Romanch’s Law” — would create a roadmap for finding new jobs for close to 200 horse-carriage workers.
“It’s always been the (previous mayoral) administrations making promises of ‘We’re going to ban this someday, we’re going to do something someday,’” Marte told The City Reporter. “This is the first time that we have the Council willing to play ball — this is the furthest it’s ever gone and I think we can take it all the way.”
The bill has the additional backing of the Central Park Conservancy, which oversees the 843-acre park, and which, until last August, had never advocated for a ban since being founded in 1980. But it also faces fierce opposition from Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents some of the horse-carriage workers.
“We take an interest in protecting the lives and the families that we represent,” Alexander Kemp, administrative vice president for TWU Local 100, told The City Reporter. “I don’t think that we get to determine which one of our members we are satisfied with becoming homeless, that’s really not a luxury we’re afforded.”
A separate proposal from Councilmember James Gennaro (D-Queens) would not shut down the carriages. The measure, backed by Local 100, would save the jobs of workers represented by the union, amend the hours when carriages operate in the morning and require hitching posts throughout a park that had more than 42 million visitors in 2025, according to the Central Park Conservancy.
“That’s more than Disney World,” said David Saltonstall, the conservancy’s vice president for government relations, policy and community affairs.
Critics mocked the idea to tether horses to hitching posts in the park as “total nonsense.”
“There is simply no amount of increased regulation or training or hitching posts that are going to prevent the next horse from spooking and bolting and killing someone again,” said Edita Birnkrant, executive director of New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets, a non-profit animal-rights organization that has long opposed horse carriages. “There is simply no way to prevent that.”
Saltonstall said the conservancy feels it “can no longer be neutral” on the issue in the face of the number of horses that have busted loose in the park.
Local officials organized a vigil at Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain after a tourist died during a horse carriage ride, June 22, 2026. Credit: Jose Martinez/The City Reporter
“We’ve been saying this for almost a year,” he said. “And I think every time we said it, we were like, ‘Please, let there not be another one of these incidents,’ and here we are.”
The conservancy last week released the results of an online and text-message poll that showed close to 70% of the 834 New Yorkers surveyed support legislation to bar horse-drawn carriages from operating in the city.
The union fired back on social media that the poll was “a load of horse manure” and that other surveys found “strong support” for keeping the carriages in the park.
Romanch Mahajan’s death came days after a 16-year-old horse died on the park’s West Drive after ingesting what a necropsy released by Local 100 described as a “substantial amount” of needles from a Central Park plant that is “highly toxic” to horses.
Kemp said the union is “begging for more regulation” and cited its calls for a veterinarian to make rounds in Central Park, more access to water for the horses, additional training, heat protection and the construction of new equestrian stables that would not take land used for recreational purposes.
A carriage horse works in Central Park, July 8, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/The City Reporte
He added that the union is open to reforms, while accusing critics of seizing on the teen tourist’s death to pursue the goal of ousting the horse carriages.
“We are not in disagreement that there needs to be a conversation — I don’t think that someone can die and you just say, ‘Hey, let’s go on with business as usual,’” Kemp said. “We acknowledge that this was a terrible tragedy attached to an industry and that they are utilizing this as their lynchpin to try and satisfy two decades of them trying to erode the industry.”
The teenager’s uncle said the family will continue to push for a permanent memorial in the park and for legislation to oust the horses.
“We need this industry stopped forever,” Gaurav Mahajan said. “That is the only legacy worthy of our heroic boy.”
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