Thirty months after whipping his fallen carriage horse Ryder in New York, a 56-year-old horse carriage driver faces a criminal trial and possible jail time. The trial is scheduled for Monday.
It will be on Assistant District Attorney Sophie Robart to convince 12 New York jurors that the defendant overdrove his dark brown Standardbred and failed to provide proper nourishment.
Central Park temperature hovered around 31°C on August 10, 2022. The humidity, lack of shade and black asphalt created a heat index of around 34°C. Ryder had been pulling a 450-kilogram carriage filled with tourists since 9:30 AM.
By 5:00 PM, Ryder could not drag the carriage three more kilometers to the West Side Livery Stable. He collapsed in New York’s rush hour traffic.
This video of the defendant screaming, “Get up, get up!” and hitting and smacking the horse as he lay on hot, black asphalt went viral.
Ryder was older than claimed
Although the defendant told arriving police that Ryder was 13 years old, he was twice that age.
“All Standardbreds have a freeze brand on the right side of their neck,” said Standardbred owner and trainer Michael Petrelli. “Their true identity can be obtained in seconds.”
Typing Ryder’s brand (R5932) into USTrotting.com reveals that the elderly NYC carriage horse had once raced as Hi Ho Cheery O.
Petrelli believes Ryder spent the next 20 years pulling an Amish tractor before finally being sold to McKeever as a “junk horse” at 26. That’s 80 to 90 in human years.
New York regulations do not allow horses to pull a carriage past the age of 26.
Key evidence the jury won’t hear
The defendant drove horses for over 20 years. “He knew (Ryder) was too old for the carriage industry when he purchased the animal in May,” the defendant’s former friend, Ken Frydman, told the New York Post. “He bought the horse on the cheap and figured he’d squeeze what he could out of it.”
Such out-of-court statements are generally forbidden in court as “hearsay.” The jury will not hear them.
The jury will also not hear that the defendant’s brother was fined $1,000 for falsifying Ryder’s age on NYC’s carriage horse license application.
The defense attorney will object to the fine being mentioned or knowledge of Ryder’s actual age being blamed on the defendant.
Another thing the jury won’t hear is about a lawsuit former carriage horse driver Aylan Kaya initiated against the defendant. According to Mr. Kaya’s complaint, “McKeever was illegally driving under Mr. Kaya’s license plate” when Ryder collapsed.
Might the jury find the defendant guilty anyway? Edita Birnkrant of NYCLASS hopes so. She’s sought a ban on horse-drawn carriages since 2008.
“A guilty verdict would validate what NYCLASS and many others have said since (ASPCA Founder) Henry Bergh: these horses are victims of criminal abuse. Ryder is just one example. There are 200 Ryders. A guilty verdict would convict not just one owner but the whole industry.”
Support animal welfare journalism
The Animal Reader is an independent animal news platform based in the Netherlands. We share daily updates about animal-related issues.
