Paul Feig and Bridget Everett pay tribute to friend murdered over Pride flag

Laura Ann Carleton was shot this weekend over a Pride flag hanging in her shop

By Sam Barsanti | August 20, 2023 | 9:24pm

Aux News Paul Feig

Paul Feig and Bridget Everett pay tribute to friend murdered over Pride flag

Paul Feig Photo: Randy Shropshire/Getty Images for Lionsgate

Director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, A Simple Favor) and comedian Bridget Everett (Somebody Somewhere) have posted tributes on their social media pages to Laura Ann Carleton, a friend of theirs who was murdered this weekend at a store she owned in California’s Lake Arrowhead community. According to police, Carleton had gotten into an argument with an unnamed 27-year-old man after he made “several disparaging remarks” about a Pride flag she had hanging outside the store, at which point the man shot her and fled the scene. She later died from the gunshot wound. The police tracked down the suspect, who was armed with a handgun, and after attempting to communicate with him, a “lethal force encounter occurred and the suspect was pronounced deceased.”

In her post, Everett noted that Carleton and her shop had been harassed over the Pride flag before, with people taking down the flag or vandalizing it, and she’d always “put up another one.” Everett also said that the last time she saw Carleton was at Lake Arrowhead’s Pride parade, adding that “all that anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has a price” and “now, Lauri’s husband Bort, her daughter, friends, and community are devastated. And for what?”