By Craig McCarthy, Alex Taylor and Aaron Feis, Aug 8, 2019 – NY Post

A former US dressage Olympian shot an award-winning equestrian on the grounds of his ritzy, 53-acre New Jersey sprawl — days after she wrote online that her life had been threatened, authorities said Thursday.

Michael Barisone, a member of the 2008 Beijing Summer Games squad, allegedly blasted the rider — identified by sources as Lauren Kanarek — twice in the chest Wednesday afternoon at Hawthorne Farm in bucolic Morris County, officials said.

Michael Baristone (Facebook/NY Post)

The attack came just days after Kanarek, 38, posted on Facebook that she had reason to fear for her safety.

“A certain known drunk has literally just informed me ‘sleep with one eye open,’ ” wrote Kanarek on Aug. 2 in one of several recent posts on the site expressing a sense of peril.

None of the messages mentions Barisone, 54, by name, but on Thursday, the former international dressage competitor was charged with attempted murder and weapons possession, officials said.

Dressage, an Olympic sport since the 1912 games in Stockholm, is the art of executing an intricate series of precise horseback maneuvers, with riders scored on a scale of zero to 10 by a panel of international judges.

According to her social media posts, Kanarek both rented a home with her fiancé and quartered horses at Hawthorne Farm — an arrangement neighbors and sources said Barisone was seeking to end.

“There was a big red sign in front saying ‘eviction,’ ” said neighbor Bob Jenkins, 66. “He was trying to get them out.”

Police sources said that cops had been called to the farm at least a half-dozen times in the week leading up to the shooting but that tensions finally came to a head around 2:15 p.m. on Wednesday.

Barisone confronted Kanarek and her fiancé on the back porch of a farmhouse and, after a brief exchange of heated words, allegedly drew his gun, sources said. “There was a very short verbal confrontation,” said one police source. “He didn’t say, ‘I’m going for my gun.’ He just went for it. He came, [and] he knew what he was going to do.”

Barisone allegedly pumped two bullets into Kanarek’s chest at nearly point-blank range, according to sources.

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