The Long Island socialite who shoved a beloved 87-year-old Manhattan vocal coach to the ground, causing a fatal head injury, was sentenced Friday to 8 1/2 years in prison on Friday.

Lauren Pazienza, 28, pleaded guilty last month to first degree manslaughter in the death of Barbara Maier Gustern. In court on Friday, Judge Felicia Mennin handed down the sentence and told Pazienza she was “really concerned about your apparent inability to take responsibility for your actions,” The Gothamist reported.

Pazienza and her fiance had been out drinking wine on the night of March 10, 2022, celebrating their upcoming wedding, CrimeOnline reported. The couple were at Chelsea Park, a block away from Gustern’s Chelsea residence, having a meal they’d bought from a food truck when a park employee told them they had to leave because the greenspace was closing.

At her bail hearing on May 10, prosecutors said she didn’t take it well.

“The defendant became angry, started shouting and cursing at the park employee, threw her food onto her fiancé, and stormed out of the park,” Assistant District Attorney Justin McNabney told the court.

As she angrily stormed off, she encountered encountered Gustern, “called Gustern a “b**** and pushed her as hard as Ms. Gustern had ever been hit in her life,”  the prosecutor said.

Gustern was able to give a friend an account of the shove before she lapsed into a coma. She died five days later.

Pazienza, meanwhile, watched from a hidden location as an ambulance took Gustern to a hospital, then fled to her parents’ Long Island home and began deleting her social media presence.

Gustern’s grandson, AJ Maier Gustern, told the court on Friday he had no sympathy for Pazienza and that her act had ruined so much of his life that he loved, according to The Gothamist. He testified that he can’t listen to recordings of his vocal lessons with his grandmother without crying and that he lived in fear in New York City, a place his grandmother and loved and never feared.

“I curse you, Lauren Pazienza,” he said. “For the rest of your days, may you be miserable.”

For herself, Pazienza said she understood Maier Gustern’s anger.

“If it was my grandmother, I would be broken and my life would be shattered,” she said, adding that she was in a drug and alcohol abuse program and meets regularly with a counselor.

“I’m just so sorry,” she said. “I wish I could take it back.”

Mennin, however, added an extra six months to what was to be an 8 year sentence after learning that Pazienza told a probation officer just before sentencing that she simply “ran into” Gustern, The New York Post reported.

For the latest true crime and justice news, subscribe to the ‘Crime Stories with Nancy Grace’ podcast.

[Featured image: Barbara Gustern/Facebook and Lauren Pazienza/Instagram]