She hung a Pride flag at her shop. She was killed over it, officials say.
She hung a Pride flag at her shop. She was killed over it, officials say.
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.
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The Republican party needs to be forcibly dissolved, or this will keep happening.
Unfortunately, liberals would rather shove their heads in the sand and keep trying to play nice with these fascists.
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What are we supposed to do? Seriously.
Congress is a logjam in both chambers.
The military would split if you tried to force red states to stop being shitty.
Most of our top weapons are in those red states.
So what’s the solution that doesn’t lead to half the country dead?
Plus, on the world stage, a “United” United States protects countries like Ukraine, Japan, South Korea, etc. What happens when we’re gone? China becomes dominant and just starts enslaving people in the lands it takes? The Saudis take over parts of the world and bring their shittiness with them? Russia fucks up more of Eastern Europe?
So what’s the answer here to some really complex questions?
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The answer is not to lose the 2024 elections and even exceed what we did before. That starts at the local leveling and volunteering with voters rights groups and getting the youth registered to vote. And we must do this the next election. And the next. Until we can close loop holes to prevent further coups by Republicans.
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Contrary to what people believe, the US military has a fairly good cross sectional representation of the American populace. It is most certainly not right wing. I've known more than a few active duty military members and actually most were moderate to liberal on the political spectrum. And fairly intelligent.
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Honestly, vote. They think they can act like this because of Trump giving them the go ahead. Move the Overton window.
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We have to stop playing within the system
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I’d guarantee you and bet that the military is overwhelmingly in favor of supporting the left should it come to it.
Otherwise, they’d have to admit that they stand against the entire purpose and cause of the military.
I just don’t see that happening. Either I have too much faith in the intelligence of our armed forces, or I’m wrong, but this is how I see it going down.
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I honestly thought I was on lemmy.ml. I didn't realize I was amidst liberal redditors, but I'll spell it out for you.
R E V O L U T I O N
We can't fix the current system.
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Eventually a Thermidorian Reaction will crush the neofascists. Hopefully soon.
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So what? You become a one party nation? How about maybe, now this will sound crazy, but fixing the validity of 3rd party parties might help.
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So the unidentified shooter was a Republican? Quit your BS.
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Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…
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His social media was full of Christian nationalist hate posts. So yes it is reasonable to assume he voted for the Christian nationalist hate party.
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How many normal people will we allow conservatives to kill before we act? History has shown that an infestation of conservatism cannot be cured by pacifism.
The war conservatives insist on waging against normal people will look exactly like this story. Conservative murders normal person in act of terrorism.
Do your part to train and prepare. You don't have to be a fighter to help others. Learn to evac wounded and administer trauma first aid. Teach others. Do your part.
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It’s definitely going that direction, and with no one willing to do what it takes to shut them down, America is destined to end up in another civil war.
Of course, I’ve no doubt it’ll be over quickly and the conservative party will be abolished- it’ll still result in an unnecessary loss of a lot of lives.
What an embarrassment america has become.
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this kinda literally the scene from Boys when the idiot gets brainwashed online to being a hate filled fascist cunt who then walks into a store and killa the cashier because he thinks he is a supe-terrorist
but conservatives absolutely won't get the metaphor in that shit.
watch conservative shitheads distance themselves from this, fox news will claim they had nothing to with this while pushing thwir hate filled fear mongering shit
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Nothing quite like murdering somebody over the fucking light spectrum.
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Not just a light spectrum! A symbol of freedom to be yourself, too. While I certainly agree they don't like colors, they also definitely don't like people being comfortable in their own skin
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Biblically, it's also the symbol that God won't wipe us all off the face of the Earth with another flood.
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Rainbows in 1973: Nice album cover, man.
Rainbows in 2023: Won't somebody think of the children!
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That flag was coming right for him, he had to stand his ground
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"Well, you know. You'll just be sitting there, minding your own business, and they'll come marching in, and crawl up your leg, and start biting the inside of your ass, and you'll be all like, 'Hey! Get out of my ass you stupid rainbows!'"
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Conservatives and being murderers. Goes together like bread and butter.
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Sounds like America
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I'm not saying this to cast doubt on anything, I believe the reason given for the attack, I'm simply curious (probably because I used to be a first responder). One thing I haven't seen explained in the articles I've read about this story is how do we know that he assaulted her for the flag and then shot her? Who called 911? How did they know who the suspect was?
The most plausible explanation to me is she was still alive when the cops got there but died before the paramedics were able to transport her, so she was able to tell them something, since no witnesses were mentioned. Second most plausible is there were witnesses.
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Wasn't she killed in her store? Virtually every store these days has security cameras. As for who called 911, guns are loud. Unless you're in the middle of nowhere, there will be people who hear the gun shot, even if they don't see what happened.
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Having a security camera doesn't mean their monitored off-site. A lot(maybe most) of the time they aren't. But agreed that guns are loud.
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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 wouldn't necessarily get them the motive and description of the suspect. It doesn't really matter to me that much anyway, it was just an unknown aspect of a story I am interested in.
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Craziest exception to the hearsay rule is the dying declaration.
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"I'm not questioning the reason for the attack but how do we know that's the reason."
It's acceptable to question sources. This story is definitely likely true, but there also plenty of cases of stuff written online(and what police say) being untrue and it's okay to probe it a little.
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I agree, but with the amount of trolling some people do regarding LGBT stuff I wanted to be very clear I'm not one of them. Since every article is stating it as fact and not using "alleged" I assume the journalists know with some certainty, but I haven't seen it detailed anywhere.
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In most cases I believe in people getting a fair trial, but in this case I'm glad he was killed by police at the scene. Fuck the piece a of shit.
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Why not give hime a life of regret, sitting behind bars for ever, knowing he thrown his life an freedome away because of a flag. Revange isn't the solution and killing people makes as as bad as them.
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Imagine being such an immature and incompetent piece of shit that you have to kill someone over a flag.
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Sadly, a large number of people have been killed over flags over mankind's history. It's actually rather common.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
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.
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.
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 making “disparaging remarks” about the Pride flag on Friday, a man shot Carleton before fleeing, according to the sheriff’s department.
Law enforcement departments in multiple states, including Maryland, California and New York, have investigated recent instances of Pride flag vandalism as hate crimes.
The original article contains 579 words, the summary contains 148 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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Is being LGBT political? It's a sad story but I don't understand why is posted in the politics community.
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…. 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.
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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.
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…it shouldn’t be, but has been made so. This article is right where it belongs
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Yes, killing someone for hanging a pride flag is a political act.
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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.
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I can't think of any links to flags and politics.
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Lmfao finding the edge of the political spectrum isn't as easy as it seems.
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I've seen someone make driving cars political lmao
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