Woman arrested for caught-on-video attack on Central Park horse carriage drivers
Published in News & Features
NEW YORK — A woman was arrested for assaulting two horse carriage drivers in Manhattan’s Central Park, smashing one over the head with a skateboard and punching another in the face while calling them animal abusers in a caught-on-video attack
Abigail Holbrook, 27, is charged with two counts of assault for the Tuesday attack on West Drive near West 59th Street, police said.
Holbrook bashed one driver in the face and shoulder with a skateboard and punched the other in the face about 10:30 a.m., according to cops. Both men are long time horse carriage drivers.
In cellphone video taken by another carriage horse driver, Holbrook, who has green hair and is wearing orange pants, speaks directly to the camera before appearing to hit a man with her skateboard.
“You’re animal abusers,” Holbrook says. “Horses do not do well in New York City. They are very sensitive to light and noise. The people that are using these horses are f---ing animal abusers.”
Holbrook starts to walk away but runs back and attacks the driver with the skateboard after someone off camera yells, “Up yours!”
After a brief scuffle with the first driver over the skateboard, Holbrook calls the driver recording the video an animal abuser and grabs for the cellphone, at which point the video ends.
The driver who took the video is the victim cops say was punched in the face, according to TWU Local 100 shop steward Christina Hansen, who witnessed the fray.
“As I was pulling up to the carriages she was screaming and abusing the customers who were getting out of the carriages, calling them animal abusers,” Hansen said. “Then she moved on to my co-worker. He told her in a New York way to get out of here.”
“That was wrong to everyone for her to swing a weapon at him,” she added. “No New Yorker should go to work in fear of being harassed or being assaulted.”
The assault comes less than a month after the New York City Council voted to end the city’s carriage horse industry by a veto-proof majority, the culmination of a decadeslong campaign to end the practice.
Animal rights activists have long argued that putting horses to work pulling carriages in Central Park is inherently abusive — while industry advocates have defended the work as good for the pack animals and maintain that the creatures are well cared for.
Multiple prior efforts to ban carriage horses stalled out in the City Council in recent years.
Support for a ban grew this year after the death of Romanch Mahajan, an 18-year-old tourist from India who died while jumping after his mother when their carriage horse bolted on a sightseeing tour.
The ban, named “Romanch’s Law,” which will become law later this month and will outlaw horse-drawn carriage tours in the city as of summer 2028.
The Transport Workers Union is expected to challenge the law in court.
Hansen, the TWU steward, blamed the City Council for the attack in a statement Wednesday.
“This is what you get when the City Council Speaker praises and poses for photos with extremist organizations like PETA and NYCLASS, whose leaders have lied and vilified us as animal abusers for decades,” she said, referencing two animal rights groups that have fought to ban carriage horses. “Their followers, who don’t know a thing about horses, have been brainwashed by these groups’ propaganda and emboldened to lash out.”
In the video Holbrook, whose last known address is in Philadelphia, refers to herself as “Squid the Kid.”
Her arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court was pending Wednesday.
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