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.
No one is advocating committing hate crimes against anybody. You are purposefully strawmanning other people so you can manipulate them into adopting your way of thinking, and I am not gonna let you do it.
You’re a prick.
This clown is motte-and-baileying himself by claiming he meant hate crimes when he was clearly talking about, and says outright, feeling hate in his previous posts.
He was not talking about hate crimes. He was talking about feeling hate and is purposefully conflating the two so he can motte-and-bailey himself out of admitting he is wrong.
That means this guy has an agenda, and is very likely a Nazi apologist.
Everybody do not listen to him or people like him.
I checked a couple of their comments on other stuff, they love Nietzsche and think child labor laws are a bad thing. Yea this person is 100% a Nazi apologist, or maybe just a straight up Nazi pretending to be a centrist
Yes those were the two key Nazi platforms
I am not a Nazi apologist like you claim, and I see now that we are clearly beyond the point of reasoning with the intolerant bigots - they must be removed by force as you’re saying. I agree with your points. We’re fighting the same fight, just in different ways - and I never attempted to formulate a strawman fallacy (although your ad hominem is nearly as repulsive). I agree with your method now, I was simply trying to find a way to avoid unnecessary bloodshed where clearly there is no way.
Sorry I made you feel so insulted by my argument as to make those points against me. I concede.