Driver charged more than 1 year after carriage horse Ryder’s collapse in Manhattan

[Gunnar Larson]

More than a year after a New York City carriage horse named Ryder collapsed
in Midtown, his driver Ian McKeever was arrested on animal abuse charges,
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said.

McKeever was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on Wednesday and charged
in a misdemeanor complaint with one count of overdriving, torturing and
injuring animals, and failure to provide proper sustenance, according to
the DA’s office. He pleaded not guilty, according to court records.

McKeever's attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The complaint details Ryder’s last day as a carriage horse on Aug. 10,
2022, when he started work with McKeever at 9:30 a.m. Throughout the day,
he was seen looking “very frail and thin,” and walking slowly while panting
with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, according to the complaint.

“As alleged, Ryder should not have been working on this hot summer day,”
Bragg said in a statement.

At around 5:10 p.m., Ryder collapsed in the middle of West 45th Street near
Ninth Avenue, authorities said. According to the complaint, McKeever
repeatedly tried forcing the horse to stand up by pulling on his reins,
yelling and using his whip.


He also didn’t provide the horse any water, and left him with his harness
on until a member of the NYPD eventually took it off, the complaint
details. The police officer was also the one who put ice and cold water on
Ryder until he was able to get back up, according to the complaint.

After the horse's collapse, Pete Donohue, a spokesperson for Transport
Workers Union Local 100 – the group that represents horse carriage drivers
– told Gothamist the horse was suffering from equine protozoal
myeloencephalitis, a neurological disease horses can contract from eating
infected opossum droppings, and not heat exhaustion.

After the incident, Ryder was retired to a farm outside of the city. The
city’s health department then accused the horse carriage’s owners of
falsifying his age in veterinary records, from 26 to 13 years old.
According to the criminal complaint, on top of old age, he suffered from a
variety of significant health issues.

“Despite his condition, he was out for hours and worked to the point of
collapse,” Bragg said in a statement. “All animals deserve to be treated
with the utmost care and the type of abuse that Ryder allegedly suffered is
unacceptable.”

Ryder was euthanized due to his poor medical condition in October of last
year.

Ryder’s collapse made headlines and renewed calls from animal rights
advocates to ban horse carriages in the city. On Wednesday, Edita
Birnkrant, executive director of New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe
Streets – or NYCLASS – said she was grateful to see animal rights taken
seriously, but one arrest, she added, doesn’t undo what she describes as an
industrywide problem with abuse.


“Animal cruelty is not taken seriously. It is not a top priority, so it's
rare that these kind of charges are filed in any abuse case,” Birnkrant
said. “We want there to be some kind of accountability and justice, but
it's not enough because this doesn't begin and end with Ryder. There are so
many horses out there right now suffering.”



https://gothamist.com/news/driver-charged-more-than-1-year-after-carriage-horse-ryders-fatal-collapse-in-manhattan?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=nypr-email&utm_campaign=Newsletter+-+Early+Addition+-+20231116&utm_term=
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