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 Carletonās Pride flag before he shot her, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriffās Department. Carleton, 66, was pronounced dead at the scene.
The shooter, whom authorities have not publicly identified, died following āa lethal force encounterā with deputies after the shooting, the sheriffās department said in a statement.
Community members have since rallied around Carletonās 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.
āShe was a fierce protector of everybody being who they wanted to be,ā Clevenger told The Washington Post.
Carleton, who went by Lauri, began working in fashion as a teenager at her familyās business, Fred Segal in Los Angeles, according to Mag.piās 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 storeās website says.
Carleton was one of the largest donors to Lake Arrowhead LGBTQ+ and attended the organizationās 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.piās Pride flag multiple times.
After making ādisparaging remarksā about the Pride flag on Friday, a man shot Carleton before fleeing, according to the sheriffās department. He was holding a handgun when deputies found him on a nearby road, where he later died, officials said.
Wasnāt she killed in her store? Virtually every store these days has security cameras. As for who called 911, guns are loud. Unless youāre in the middle of nowhere, there will be people who hear the gun shot, even if they donāt see what happened.
Having a security camera doesnāt mean their monitored off-site. A lot(maybe most) of the time they arenāt. But agreed that guns are loud.
Yes but I thought I read somewhere that the shooter was confronted soon after (a couple hours?) which would be very fast to find and go through security footage. And yes about the gun, but that wouldnāt necessarily get them the motive and description of the suspect. It doesnāt really matter to me that much anyway, it was just an unknown aspect of a story I am interested in.