The family of the 18-year-old boy killed by a runaway carriage horse last month pleaded with the New York City Council Wednesday to ban the horse-drawn park tours, as lawmakers considered a bill that would wind down the industry.
“I cannot properly describe to you the true fear inside that carriage,” Deepak Mahajan, father of Romanch Mahajan, told the City Council over a video link during the marathon hearing. He sat beside his wife, Priya Mahajan, who held a photo of their dead son.
Romanch, his parents and his little brother were visiting the Big Apple from India last month when the family took a horse-drawn carriage ride in Central Park. The horse bolted after the driver stepped out of the carriage, trying to take the family’s photo.
In the ensuing chaos, Romanch’s mother fell from the carriage, and the teen went after her, fatally hitting his head in the process — the first recorded human fatality in Gotham’s carriage-horse industry.
Obtained by Daily News
The aftermath of an out-of-control horse-drawn carriage is pictured in Central Park on Wednesday, June 17, 2026. (Obtained by Daily News)
“It was shaking, it was speeding, there was no one holding the reins, and we could do nothing but hold on to each other and scream,” Deepak said Wednesday of the ill-fated carriage ride.
“My wife fell. Romanch tried to help his mother, and he too fell,” the grieving father continued as his wife wiped her eyes. “He hit his head on the ground, and he did not move — he never moved again.”
“I kept shouting his name, but he did not move,” Deepak said. “He took his last breath in his mother’s arms while his 11-year-old brother and I stood watching.”
“We still have not unpacked Romanch’s luggage from that trip,” he added. “We are shattered. Our whole family is shattered.”
“This was not an unpredictable accident,” Deepak said. “This was a safety violation.”
The emotional recounting came at the start of a day-long hearing during which the City Council’s Health Committee heard testimony on a bill that would end all horse-drawn carriage rides by June 2028 — a legislative effort to which the Mahajans have lent their late son’s name. The hearing, which started at 10 a.m., was still going at 7 p.m.
Romanch’s Law, which has seen a swell of Council support in recent weeks, is a rehash of a bill formerly known as Ryder’s Law, named after a carriage horse that collapsed and died in 2022.
If made law, it would immediately end the issuance of new medallions for carriage horses, and end the industry entirely in the summer of 2028.
Sovia Thurkal, Romanch’s aunt, broke down in tears Wednesday while testifying in person before the Council.
“Please remember his name,” she said, her voice breaking. “Remember the life he lived and the love he gave to everyone around him.”
“Make sure he’s the last person to die from this industry,” she sobbed.
Previous efforts to wind down the carriage horse industry have died on the vine.
Ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio unsuccessfully tried to do it before leaving office at the end of 2021.
A 2025 attempt to force a hearing on a ban failed after only one member of the Health Committee, Brooklyn Councilman Simcha Felder, voted in favor of it. Four committee members voted against that effort and two abstained. Two others — including now-Council Speaker Julie Menin — didn’t show up to vote.
But Romanch Mahajan’s tragic death appears to have turned the tide, with Menin announcing her support late Tuesday. The speaker’s eleventh-hour nod came amid a groundswell of support. As of Wednesday evening, 26 of the Council’s 51 members had signed onto the bill as co-sponsors.
But former Council member Bob Holden, who authored the original Ryder’s Law, took lawmakers to task for the delay Wednesday.
“My original bill would have banned horse-drawn carriages in New York City on June 1 of this year,” Holden said. “Romanch died on June 17.
“That should be chilling,” Holden said. “That is the cost of four years of obstruction.”
Council member James Gennaro (D-Queens), who authored a competing bill which would require stricter driver training and provisions like hitching posts — but would allow carriage rides to continue — was the primary dissenting voice at Wednesday’s hearing.
Gennaro grilled representatives from the Department of Health and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection on whether enough had been done to enforce regulations currently in place.
A hearing on Gennaro’s alternative bill has not been scheduled.
The law would also require that current New York City carriage horses not be sold into slaughter or used in another carriage horse business elsewhere, plus mandates the creation of a jobs program for the roughly 150 drivers who would be put out of work — though the program’s details are still slim.
“I am a horse person,” testified Christina Hansen, a carriage driver and shop steward with the Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents some 150 carriage owners and drivers.
“I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, horse capital of the world,” she said. “This bill is telling me that I can’t go work with my horse in another place to pull a horse and carriage.”
“What about the [NYPD] Mounted Unit? Could I get a job with them in the stable? Or riding as a police officer?” she asked. “That is what I’m skilled at. I don’t need to be told to work in a hotel or something like that. I am a horse person.”
Pete Donohue, a spokesman for the union, called on the Council to reconsider its support for a ban.
“Just seven months ago, this same committee rejected this exact same bill, then called Ryder’s Law,” he said. “So what changed?”
“For the first time in 167 years of carriage rides being a popular feature of Central Park, a passenger fatality occurred,” Donohue said. “Are you considering banning walking, biking, scooters, taxi cabs, buses or the subway? Of course not — because that defies all logic and common sense. So does banning carriage horses.”
The Health Committee took no vote on Wednesday on whether or not to advance Romanch’s Law to the full Council. A vote on the bill is expected to take place next month.