By West Side Rag
A carriage horse collapsed and died while giving a ride in Central Park on Tuesday evening.
Deniz, the 16-year-old horse, collapsed around 7:30 p.m. within the park near West 72nd Street and Central Park West, according to police and multiple reports.
After a few minutes of lying on the ground following the collapse, the horse stopped breathing, an eyewitness told West Side Rag.
Deniz had worked in the city for 10 years and had been given a clean bill of health during his most recent examination in March, the New York Times reported.
“I really feel like I lost someone in the family,” carriage driver Nurettin Kirbiyik told CBS News.
TWU Local 100, which represents carriage horse drivers, said the incident was a “sudden, catastrophic medical emergency.” No official cause of death has been provided.
A witness to the incident, Danielle Leeann Chin, said to CBS – “I’m shaking now just talking about it. This is the second time that I’ve seen a horse carriage incident in 10 months.”
Deniz’s death came the same week that New York City Councilmember Christopher Marte announced that he would reintroduce a bill on Thursday to ban horse carriage rides. The bill, called Ryder’s Law, which is named after a horse that died in Manhattan in 2022, did not pass the City Council’s Committee on Health in November 2025. Mayor Zohran Mamdani reiterated on Wednesday that he supports the passage of the bill.
“The Central Park Conservancy has long believed that horse carriages pose a public safety risk in the increasingly crowded Park,” a spokesperson for the conservancy wrote in an email to West Side Rag. “In the past year, New Yorkers have witnessed at least seven separate incidents in which horses became spooked and either broke free—posing danger to passengers, park-goers, and others—or caused injury to their drivers, or, now, collapsed and died on Central Park’s Drives.”
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A tragic loss whatever you may think about carriage horse rides. RIP Deniz.
Time to stop the animal cruelty for a few meager horse drivers who could easily find another job that doesn’t include torturing animals. NYC residents are sick and tired of witnessing this animal abuse in our park and on our streets, that also poses safety issues to people and vehicles that we’ve seen for years. Time for City Council to act!!
Isn’t it enough? Just shows you how much political (and monetary) influence unions have over the politicians in this City. Very sad.
Enough is enough already.
That poor horse. Can we please just stop this?