An Indian teenager died while trying to save his mother, who was thrown from a horse-drawn carriage after the horse suddenly bolted at the famous Central Park in New York City.
Romanch Mahajan, 18, was on his first trip to New York with his family when the incident took place on Wednesday (June 17, 2026), The New York Times reported.
The driver stopped to take a family picture, and in an instant, the horse bolted. It tore up onto the sidewalk and bumped onto the grass, accelerating crazily, the driver racing behind, the report added.
“We were yelling, ‘Help me, help me!” Deepak Mahajan, Romanch’s father, said.
The family clung desperately to one another, but when Mr. Deepak’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. Deepak.
“He was screaming, ‘Mom!’” “The horse got scared and ran super fast,” Tatianna Bresler, who works at the Tavern on the Green, told The New York Post.
Ms. Bresler, who called 911 as soon as she saw the crash and heard screaming, said a witness was able to slow down the runaway horse before the carriage flipped.
Romanch hit his head on the ground and lay still.
He died Wednesday night at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Centre, The New York Times report added.
The rest of the family, father, mother and Romanch’s younger brother, escaped with minor injuries, though their carriage clipped another carriage and toppled over, shattering into pieces, it said.
Bill to ban carriages in NY
The accident is the latest in a 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.” 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 to ban the 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,” Mr. Marte was quoted as saying by the report.
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.
Published – June 18, 2026 12:46 pm IST
