A hansom-cab horse went out of control and crashed into parked cars near Central Park Thursday — flipping over the carriage and and getting trapped beneath it.
The horse, named Charlie, was OK after firefighters and witnesses extricated him from the carriage, officials said.
The hansom cab was turning north onto Eighth Avenue from West 57th Street at about 10:15 a.m. when the driver appeared to suffer a seizure, according to witness Garth Burton.
“It looked like the driver was having a fit, an epileptic fit. He couldn’t control the horse. It came across Eighth Avenue and ran into that blue car,” said Burton, 48, a pedicab driver from Washington Heights, pointing at a parked Chrysler PT Cruiser. “The carriage flipped over and onto the horse. The driver was screaming.
I was trying to help him lift it off.”
Burton added, “We [along with firefighters] started cutting the reins from the horse. It took about seven minutes.”
A spokeswoman for Teamsters Joint Council 16, the union that represents driver Frank Luo, said that Luo did not suffer a seizure and that Charlie simply got spooked.
“There’s no confirmation of any seizure ” said the spokeswoman Nell O’Connor. “They’re [horse and Luo] both fine right now.”
Another witness, Chanelle Futrell, 31, a dog walker from Harlem, said Charlie was cooperative during the rescue. “The horse was surprisingly calm,” Futrell said.
The crash happened one day after the Department of Consumer Affairs hit Luo with charges of overcharging passengers and overworking a horse.