The man who fatally shot a California store owner during a dispute over the Pride flag she displayed shared anti-LGBTQ+ posts on social media, authorities said.
Travis Ikeguchi, 27, was identified on Monday as the person responsible for the fatal shooting of Laura “Lauri” Carleton, 66.
Ikeguchi tore down a rainbow flag outside Carleton’s Mag.Pi store in Cedar Glen, near Lake Arrowhead, and “yelled many homophobic slurs” before the shooting on Friday, San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus told reporters on Monday.
He was killed by sheriff’s deputies later on Friday during a confrontation about a mile from the store after opening fire on them, striking multiple patrol vehicles, Dicus said. The deputies returned fire and shot Ikeguchi, who died at the scene.
Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
Ikeguchi, who lived in Cedar Glen, had a history of posting anti-LGBTQ+ content on multiple social media platforms, Mara Rodriguez, the sheriff’s department’s public information officer, told reporters.
His pinned post on X, formerly Twitter, features a burning Pride flag. “What to do with the LGBTQP flag?” Ikeguchi wrote in the June 13 post.
“There is only one way to the path of salvation and to have eternal life and that is through Jesus Christ. And yes, the path is narrow,” Ikeguchi wrote in his bio on X, where he had fewer than 100 followers.
He regularly posted and reposted Bible verses in between anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion content.
In another post on X during Pride Month, Ikeguchi wrote that abortion and same-sex marriage “are both immoral and are design to destroy humanity one by one. So if someone is pro-abortion and pro-LGBTQP, they are at war against the foundation of family values.”
In a different post, Ikeguchi celebrated the debunked claim that Italy had canceled Pride Month and replaced it with a “Family Pride Month,” to promote “traditional families.”
“Hallelujah!!!! Jesus is good!!!” Ikeguchi wrote.
X
Ikeguchi also shared a photo of a burning Pride flag in a post on Gab, a social media platform that has become a haven for extremists.
“We need to STOP COMPROMISING on this LGBT dictatorship and not let them take over out lives!” Ikeguchi wrote in the post on his now-defunct Gab page, according to the New York Post. “True followers of Christ SHOULD NOT and NEVER TOLERATE this stupid indoctrination of LGBT agenda in marriage or in our own businesses.”
He added: “Who has the courage to post this and feel no shame of it!? Don’t be a coward!!”
The investigation into Carleton’s killing is ongoing, Sheriff Dicus said. According to NBC News, it is being investigated as a possible hate crime.
The district attorney’s office will investigate the shooting of Ikeguchi, as is standard practice with lethal encounters involving law enforcement.
The firearm Ikeguchi used was not registered to him, and he did not have a license to carry a concealed weapon, officials said.
His family had reported him missing to the sheriff’s department on Thursday, Rodriguez said. He “was positively identified by his next of kin as the suspect in this case,” she added.
Newsweek has contacted the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department for further comment via email.
Carleton, who is survived by her husband and nine children in a blended family, did not identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, according to friends and an LGBTQ group in Lake Arrowhead.
Equality California, an advocacy group, said it has recorded a sharp rise in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
“Over the past year, we have seen a sharp increase in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric being expressed by far right extremists and hate groups—rhetoric which has resulted in physical intimidation, harassment, and acts of violence,” the group’s executive director Tony Hoang said in a statement.
“More than 350 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents occurred from June 2022 to April 2023, accompanied by the introduction of more than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ pieces of legislation introduced across the country in 2023 alone,” he said. “This hate does not happen in a vacuum—it is all part of a backlash to the advances made by the LGBTQ+ community. We must continue to stand against this rising tide of hatred.”