Horse carriage operators stationed near the West 59th Street entrance to Central Park. Photo by Gus Saltonstall
By West Side Rag
A horse pulling a carriage escaped its handler Monday in Central Park, knocking down a traffic sign and forcing passengers to jump out of the vehicle to escape, dramatic video of the event shows.
The runaway horse got loose on Labor Day near the Central Park Dairy building, close to the 65th Street Transverse Road, according to video posted on the Stopping NYC Horse Abuse Instagram page.
Video shows the horse pulling a carriage with no driver; the horse runs over a crosswalk sign before continuing down the road as passengers jump out of the back, and a man, presumably the horse’s handler, runs behind the cart yelling out.
“Call 911,” an eyewitness says.
“Moments ago in Central Park, a terrified horse spooked and bolted out of control, dragging a carriage full of customers and smashing through a stop sign, garbage cans, and other objects in its path,” reads the caption on the Stopping NYC Horse Abuse Instagram account.
A spokesperson from the Central Park Conservancy confirmed to West Side Rag that the horse has been contained as of 3:20 p.m.
“Please read our letter from last month on why carriage horses no longer belong in Central Park,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to the Rag. “Today’s incident only underscores our concern about the dangers posed by horses in the increasingly crowded Park.”
The runaway horse comes weeks after the conservancy publicly called for the first time for the end of horse-drawn carriages in Central Park. The call from the conservancy came one week after a horse pulling a carriage collapsed and died in Hell’s Kitchen, which reignited the conversation around banning the form of transportation in the city.
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