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.

  • DadWagonDriver
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    1 year ago

    What are the steps to a revolution without a civil war?

    And wow, you looked at all, what, 25 Lemmy posts I have? Wow. Genius fucking detective here.

    I don’t support fascism, you stupid fuck, but because I ALSO don’t support just murdering all the Republicans in the country, somehow that means I’m for the status quo.

    I have zero to apologize for. You’re a dumb fucking teenager who thinks that we should have a revolution that somehow doesn’t devolve into a civil war, as if you can just say some magic words and red states, which have been a problem for this country since its foundation with all of the shitty compromises that had to be made to even FORM the United States, are somehow going to say “Oh, shit, this kid on the internet is right! Let’s accept what the left wants now!”

    We agree that American conservatives are shitty humans who SHOULDN’T have power, but one of us doesn’t want millions of people to die to take power from them.

    If I could wave a magic wand and take all military assets out of Confederate states while also getting every non-fascist out and to the better part of the US, then expel those shithole states, I would. But there’s no magic. There’s no way forward without war until at least until the geriatrics in charge die of old age. Unfortunately, the right has also weaponized new media, so GenX and a lot of my fellow elder Millennials have fallen for their shit, but fortunately it’s far fucking fewer than the Boomers and the self-glossed Greatest Generation.

    I’m not willing to start killing Republicans, but it sure as fuck sounds like you are. About as far as I’d recommend is to slap anyone at your middle school who listens to Andrew Tate or Joe Rohan.