Manhattan’s West Side turned into the Wild West today after a horse prancing near Broadway and 110th Street in Harlem as part of a Federation of Black Cowboys event got loose from a cowgirl and took off around 5 p.m., organizers and witnesses said.
The jittery animal was finally corralled about six blocks away, at Riverside Drive and 115th Street.
“It must have scared the hell out of a jogger or two … One lady told me she heard some screaming before they found the horse,’’ said Ragu Kanimalla, 22, a Columbia University student who was walking along Riverside with a pal when he saw “about two dozen cops coming out of the park and up 115th towards Broadway with a horse.
“It looked like a crazy scene. I thought the horse might have trampled someone,’’ Kanimalla said.
“I asked one of the cops about what happened it, and he said the horse just went crazy and ran down the street into the park.”
Local resident Terrance Jones, 27, said the runaway, whitish-gray horse started feeling its oats minutes earlier, as “a lot of people dressed up like cowboys and a bunch of horses were trotting up Broadway.
“It looked like some sort of parade was going on. [Then] one of the horse keepers lost control. … I heard [she] dropped the reins, and [the horse] ran into the park. Some of the keepers caught it soon after.’’
Responding cops initially wanted to keep the animal to check it out, but the group’s trainers convinced them to just let them lead it away, sources said.
“Our horses are trained, but this horse was wild, and it got away from us,’’ admitted Mike Davis, 24, a member of the Black Cowboys.
“I don’t know what happened,’’ he said. “We just want to educate people about the black West and teach people how to ride horses. No one got hurt. That’s the most important thing.’’
The event, which featured about four or five horses, came after another one sponsored by the group on West 113th Street on Friday designed to expose city kids to horses and Western cowboy culture.
GOTCHA! A cop calms a horse that ran off from a cowboy event in Harlem and sparked a frantic chase, that ended when it was captured on Riverside Drive and 115th Street. (Warzer jaff)