An 18-year-old tourist visiting New York City with his family was killed Wednesday afternoon after a Central Park carriage horse named Sampson got loose near Tavern on the Green and threw him from the carriage. Police said the man, who was taken to Weill Cornell Medical Center in critical condition, later died from his injuries.
The crash unfolded around 2:45 p.m., when the family was getting back into the carriage and Sampson suddenly spooked and took off. It is still unclear what startled the horse, and it is not clear how many family members were aboard when it happened. Witness Ron Pobuda said it happened so fast that people did not have time to think about running or getting out of the way, and video showed one person being thrown from the speeding carriage.
The death puts a hard edge on an accident that happened in one of New York City’s most visible tourist corridors, where horse-drawn rides have long been part of the landscape. The Central Park Conservancy renewed its call for Ryder's Law after saying this was the tragedy it had feared when it first asked last year for horse carriages to be banned from Central Park because of public safety and public health risks.
Alexander Kemp of TWU Local 100 said the driver appeared to be at least at arm’s length from the horse, taking a photo of passengers in the carriage, and said a driver is not supposed to leave the carriage to take photos, ever. Kemp also said the horse had been in the park for only six weeks, that the carriage clipped the wheel of another carriage and toppled onto its side with people still inside, and that the owner had suspended the driver indefinitely and planned to retire Sampson from the business. The union also pointed out that thousands of rides are taken without incident, but that argument sits uneasily beside a fatal fall in the middle of the park.
For the tourist’s family, the day ended in the most final way possible. For New York City, the question now is not whether horse-carriage rides can be sold as a safe tradition, but whether the city is prepared to keep defending them after an 18-year-old visitor lost his life in plain view.
