Idon’t know how to begin this story except with stark, terrible, simple facts. A 66-year-old woman is dead, gunned down for hanging a Pride flag outside her boutique clothing shop in Cedar Glen, a rural Southern California town known as queer friendly and welcoming.
According to witnesses, Laura Ann (Lauri) Carleton was working in her shop about 5 PM last Friday when she noticed a 27-year-old man outside “ripping her Pride flag down.” Neighbors say her Pride flags had been vandalized in the past, and she kept replacing them.
When she went out to confront the man Friday evening, he shouted anti-LGBTQ slurs then shot her to death, point blank.