A carriage horse named Deniz collapsed and died on Central Park's East Drive on June 9 after ingesting foliage from a Japanese Yew, a plant toxic enough to stop a horse's heart, according to a necropsy conducted by Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine. The finding, circulated by the transport workers' union, shifts the blame away from the carriage industry and toward the people who maintain the park's landscaping. But activists and park officials are using the same death to renew their push to ban horse-drawn carriages from New York City altogether.

The result is a familiar New York standoff: a dead animal, a grief-stricken driver, dueling press statements, and a political class that has promised action on carriage horses for more than a decade without delivering it.

What the necropsy found

Cornell pathologists discovered "abundant plant needles" in Deniz's stomach, mouth, and digestive tract, the Daily Mail reported. The material was identified as Japanese Yew, a non-native ornamental shrub described as extremely toxic to both horses and humans and capable of causing cardiac arrest and death.

The horse's driver, Nurettin Kirbiyik, told reporters he saw no signs that Deniz had been unwell before the animal went down. The New York Post reported that a Cornell veterinary pathologist deemed the volume of plant material found in Deniz's stomach sufficient to be lethal. Two tourists were riding in the carriage at the time. The collapse occurred near Strawberry Fields around 7:30 p.m.

Kirbiyik, the driver, offered a simple statement of loss.

"I feel like I lost someone in the family."

The blame game begins

TWU Local 100, the powerful union that represents carriage drivers along with a majority of New York City's transit workers, wasted no time pointing a finger at the Central Park Conservancy. Union officials blamed the Conservancy for planting Japanese Yew shrubs within reach of the carriage route and demanded an apology from NYCLASS, the animal-rights group that has long protested the carriage industry, and from local lawmakers who have used the incident to push a ban.

Christina Hansen, a horse carriage driver and TWU Local 100 shop steward, framed the issue as a public safety hazard that extends well beyond horses. Her comments, sourced through Gothamist, laid the responsibility squarely on the park's managers.

"We are supervising them, but a toddler just as easily could have ingested some of this plant."

Hansen added a sharper point about the carriage route itself.

"The fact that it was anywhere within reach of a horse that was on the carriage drive, which was designed for horses to be on, is outrageous."

That argument carries a certain common-sense weight. If the park plants a shrub that can stop a horse's heart along a road built for horses, the question of who failed whom is not as simple as the ban crowd wants it to be.

Conservancy and activists push the opposite conclusion

The Central Park Conservancy, through spokesperson Kate Blumm, took a different tack. Blumm asserted that Japanese Yew is commonly planted across the United States and that preventing horses from grazing on park plants falls on the carriage operators, not the landscapers. She then pivoted to the broader political argument.

"This tragedy underscores something larger: It's time for New York City to join other major cities around the world and ban horse carriages from our city."

Edita Birnkrant, executive director of NYCLASS, went further, turning the union's own necropsy release against it.

"TWU's own statement demonstrates a complete failure to properly supervise and protect a horse in their care."

Birnkrant also described the death in visceral terms, telling the New York Post that Deniz suffered "an agonizing death right in front of everyone" and that witnesses would never forget seeing it happen.

The public collapse of a carriage horse in Central Park is not a new spectacle. Each time it happens, the same groups line up on the same sides, the same calls for a ban circulate, and the same political inertia prevails.

Decades of promises, no resolution

The political history here is long and unimpressive. Mayor Ed Koch first implemented limited protections for carriage horses in the 1980s. In 2013, Bill de Blasio ran for mayor on a platform of removing carriage horses from Central Park entirely. He won. He never delivered the ban.

Now Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he supports banning carriage horses from the park, while also pledging to work with the drivers' union to protect their jobs and find a solution that satisfies both sides. That kind of both-ways positioning is a reliable sign that nothing will happen soon.

Some lawmakers are currently pushing a bill to abolish the carriage horse industry outright, though the specific legislation and its sponsors remain unclear. The Daily Mail reported reaching out to TWU Local 100, the Central Park Conservancy, NYCLASS, and the mayor's office for comment.

Who is really accountable?

Strip away the press releases and the question is straightforward. A horse ate a plant that grows in the park, along a route where horses are licensed to operate, and died. The necropsy says the plant killed the horse. The union says the park shouldn't have planted it there. The park says the drivers should have stopped the horse from eating it. The activists say the whole industry should be shut down.

What nobody disputes is that Japanese Yew is widely present in Central Park. Hansen's point about children is not idle rhetoric, the plant is described as extremely toxic to humans as well. If the Conservancy knew the shrub was there and knew horses use that road, the failure to remove it or fence it off is a legitimate question that deserves a direct answer, not a deflection into the ban debate.

And if the carriage industry's critics want to use this incident to justify abolishing the trade, they should be honest about what the necropsy actually found. The horse was not overworked. It was not beaten. It was not suffering from heat exhaustion. It ate a poisonous plant that someone planted in its path.

That distinction matters, or it should, if the goal is accountability rather than a predetermined political outcome.

The real stakes

Carriage drivers like Kirbiyik are working people. They belong to a union. They operate under city regulations on a route that has hosted horse-drawn carriages since Central Park opened in 1858. Wiping out their livelihoods over an incident caused by a toxic ornamental shrub planted by the park's own managers would be a strange kind of justice.

The activists at NYCLASS have every right to advocate for animal welfare. But advocacy loses credibility when it treats every incident as confirmation of a conclusion reached long ago, regardless of what the evidence actually shows. The Cornell necropsy does not support the narrative that the carriage industry worked this horse to death. It supports the narrative that a dangerous plant was growing where it should not have been.

New York's political leaders have spent more than forty years tinkering with carriage horse regulations and making campaign promises they never keep. If Mamdani and the City Council want to act, they could start with something concrete: require the Central Park Conservancy to identify and remove toxic plants along carriage routes. That would protect horses, dogs, and children alike.

But that solution doesn't generate the headlines or the donor enthusiasm that a full ban does. And in New York politics, the headline usually wins.

When the evidence points one way and the political class runs the other, the problem isn't the carriage horse. It's the people holding the reins.