Service set for Ross Reisner, slain LI horseman

A service has been planned for Sunday for Ross Reisner, the Long Island horseman who police said was fatally shot Tuesday inside his Setauket home.

Rabbi Jeffrey Segelman will officiate at a 3:30 p.m. service at Sinai Chapels, 162-05 Horace Harding Expy., Fresh Meadows, Queens, although arrangements are still incomplete, the funeral home said.

About four months before Reisner was fatally shot, a box had arrived at his stately residence bearing an ominous gift: a dead bird.

That delivery and a complaint that Reisner's domestic partner, Kevin Murray, filed against a former tenant are among the pieces of information that police are examining in the slaying, sources said. It is not known who sent the bird or how it reached the home.

Police officials said Thursday they were still looking for the shooter or shooters.

Reisner, 50, a horse trainer and riding instructor for more than two decades, was shot inside his home about 8:45 p.m. Tuesday. Several shots were fired through a first-floor window, striking Reisner once in the chest, police said. He died at the hospital. Murray was grazed by a bullet in the arm, but refused medical attention, police said.

In court papers filed Aug. 30, Murray alleged he had been harassed by the former tenant, Brett C. Knight of Manhattan, who had rented a basement apartment in the Setauket home, according to court papers and Reisner's family.

Knight, 45, was charged with second-degree harassment, a misdemeanor, but failed to appear before a judge in First District Court in Central Islip on Sept. 4 to answer the charge. There is a warrant for Knight's arrest.

With John Valenti