Photo by Danielle Chin
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A horse-drawn carriage ride in Central Park turned chaotic on Labor Day morning when a frightened horse named Bambi bolted, forcing passengers to leap from the moving buggy and sending nearby pedestrians scrambling to get out of the way.
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The incident occurred around 11:10 a.m. near East 69th Street, when the horse—reportedly still in training—was startled, allegedly by a loud garbage truck driving closely behind the carriage. A video posted to TikTok by @off.the.press.news shows two passengers either jumping or falling from the buggy as the horse takes off. The driver was thrown across the road while trying to stop the animal, according to NYCLASS, an animal advocacy group.
The horse ran for about five blocks, crashing into trash cans, metal signs, and ultimately a parked carriage near Bethesda Fountain. “It’s unpredictable – he could have trampled in any direction,” Danielle Chin, a witness who was walking her dog nearby, told the New York Post. “Luckily, the horse knew the path of the loop – but there are all these people around, all these tourists, that … don’t have instincts to back up when something happens like that.” She added, “What if that stop sign was a human? How are we gonna let this keep going until someone actually, until a human gets hurt?”
Photo by Danielle Chin
“The horse carriage driver kept saying to the cops and to people around that the ‘garbage truck purposely drove into them’ but really what happened was the driver got too close to the garbage truck and spooked the horse,” Chin told East Side Feed.
Multiple ambulances responded to the scene, but as of Monday afternoon, the extent of injuries had not been made public.
Photo by Danielle Chin
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Christina Hansen, a union representative for carriage drivers (TWU Local 100), confirmed to PIX 11 that Bambi had only been working in the park for a few weeks. She said the horse appeared to be frightened by the garbage truck, calling it “very loud.” “Whether this was road rage, spooking, or garbage motor — the driver says it was very loud. We just don’t know yet,” Hansen said.
Animal rights group NYCLASS called out the incident as the fourth runaway carriage horse event in Central Park since May. In a statement shared with The Post, NYCLASS executive director Edita Birnkrant said, “Today’s violent runaway horse crash in Central Park makes it crystal clear: no one is able to protect the horses or the public from abuse, danger, injury or death as long as horse-drawn carriages continue to operate.” She urged the City Council to fast-track and pass Ryder’s Law, which would ban carriage horses citywide. “Every day of delay is gambling with lives,” she added.
The Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park, reiterated its opposition to horse-drawn carriages following the incident.
Not everyone agrees that a ban is the answer. A rep for the carriage drivers’ union told The New York Post, “An investigation is absolutely warranted when isolated incidents like this happen, just like when there’s a taxi cab accident. It’s absurd, however, to say an entire industry should be banned and eliminated, just as it would proposing taxicabs be banned after a taxi accident.” Hansen also told PIX 11 that with the Conservancy now calling for a ban, “it has created a hostile and potentially dangerous situation.”
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