When a clothing store opened in Cedar Glen, Calif., in the summer of 2021, the owner hung a Pride flag at the entrance, her friends recalled. Whenever someone would tear down the flag, owner Laura Carleton would raise another one.
But after someone complained about the flag on Friday, the encounter turned deadly.
A man arrived at the store, Mag.pi, around 5 p.m. and criticized Carleton’s Pride flag before he shot her, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. Carleton, 66, was pronounced dead at the scene.
The shooter, whom authorities have not publicly identified, died following “a lethal force encounter” with deputies after the shooting, the sheriff’s department said in a statement.
Community members have since rallied around Carleton’s store, placing Pride flags, flowers, candles and photos of Carleton in front of it. Matthew Clevenger of Lake Arrowhead LGBTQ+ said Carleton was a strong ally of the LGBTQ+ community.
“She was a fierce protector of everybody being who they wanted to be,” Clevenger told The Washington Post.
Carleton, who went by Lauri, began working in fashion as a teenager at her family’s business, Fred Segal in Los Angeles, according to Mag.pi’s website. After graduating from the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., Carleton worked at a retail store before joining Kenneth Cole in the 1980s. Carleton worked for the fashion company for more than 15 years as an executive.
In 2013, Carleton founded her clothing store, Mag.pi, on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, Calif. She added a second store in Cedar Glen in 2021. While she built her career, Carleton married her husband and took pride in their blended family of nine children, her store’s website says.
Carleton was one of the largest donors to Lake Arrowhead LGBTQ+ and attended the organization’s Pride boat parade in June, Clevenger said. A section of Mag.pi was dedicated to rainbow-colored products, and she displayed rainbow candles by the cash register, he said.
Carleton helped create a culture in which the LGBTQ+ community felt accepted, Clevenger said. But some community members were still resistant, he added, and took down Mag.pi’s Pride flag multiple times.
After making “disparaging remarks” about the Pride flag on Friday, a man shot Carleton before fleeing, according to the sheriff’s department. He was holding a handgun when deputies found him on a nearby road, where he later died, officials said.
Is being LGBT political? It's a sad story but I don't understand why is posted in the politics community.
She wasn’t LGBTQ+. She engaged in political activism and was murdered, more or less, for that activism.
Thanks for the clarification. Also, why does everyone hate my comment? I didn't mean to offend anyone, and I support the LGBT movement.
Being LGBT is now political. Politicians are literally debating weather LGBT people should have rights.
…. Because right wing shit bags made it political.
Ban LGBQT books.
Ban LGBQT healthcare.
Ban drag shows.
Ban everything that isn’t white conservative Christian.
And then if they succeed in that then what? Did they win? Do they take their ball and go home? It's not like the world was all hunky-dory in the fifties. There's no golden age to go back to.
Then they move on to the next entry in the "then they came for" list.
Okay but at that point only white Christian nationalists are left.
Like what are they going to do take the 18 million people left in America and wage war on the rest of the planet?
They would get annihilated, which now that I think about it is probably the amazing hidden backstory behind Big hero 6. Welcome to San Fran Tokyo
Yup, and then they decide to start in on Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Quakers, and Catholics.
Probably, yeah. When they have rid the country of those they consider to be undesirable and it hasn't solved all of society's problems like they said it would, they can either admit that they committed genocide for no reason or start looking abroad for new monsters to blame shit on and then slay.
Yeah, there's one little wrinkle in that outlook. Fascism does really short-sighted stupid shit at the end when it gets desperate, and has no regard for human life, and they would have access to the US nuclear arsenal.
The wealthy people pushing this will just find some new novelity, the rest habe no concept of a future.
A lot of countries have historically legislated religion, does that make being religious a political act? I don't think so. Same with this. Don't let people co-opt something that you and doesn't effect others and let them make you a villain or a martyr because of it.
You don’t realize that there’s an ongoing global movement for queer rights, and an ongoing backlash that often plays out in the realm of politics.
Ok, I know there's a whole movement and everything. I know some people can make it political. I guess that's how it made it here.
If you don’t think mass movements for human rights are “political,” what do you think “political” means? I’m seriously asking. Do you not think civil rights marches were political, either? I do not understand.
Sorry for the late response. I thought politics were about the people in charged off making rules. Clearly, no one ever explicitly told me the definition of the word. I guessed the word based off of where it was used like a lot of other words.
Gotcha. There’s a concerted effort to make “political” a dirty word. I’m sorry if you were really just unaware.
…it shouldn’t be, but has been made so. This article is right where it belongs
Yes, killing someone for hanging a pride flag is a political act.
Supporting LGBT+ people apparently is, along with a bunch of other things I'd consider 'basic human decency' thanks to the right wing in this country going absolutely bugfuck the last decade and change.
Lmfao finding the edge of the political spectrum isn't as easy as it seems.
I've seen someone make driving cars political lmao
I can't think of any links to flags and politics.
I was wondering what the defense would come up with.
Is this defensive? I was questioning the placement of the story, not supporting the shooting. I am 100% pro-LGBTQ, and I don't know how it came across any other way.
How is an act of terrorism not political?
Fair