11 News reporter Vicente Arenas' update

A Heights area store clerk shot and killed a man who allegedly ran out of his store with 18 beers Wednesday night.

The shooting happened at a Conoco in the 600 block of Studewood at White Oak.

The clerk said the man went into the store around 11:45 p.m. and walked out with a 12-pack and a six-pack of beer. The store clerk followed the suspect out to his car.

The suspect allegedly reached for something, and that's when the clerk shot him once in the chest, fearing the man was reaching for a gun.

Two witnesses tried to perform CPR on the suspect, but he died at the scene.

Houston police haven't determined if the suspect had a weapon in his car. The case has been referred to a grand jury.

“You can’t run rampant and just go steal beer.  I mean if that guy let him steal beer then what’s next. They steal your car.  They steal everything,” said Ary Bolanos who is a customer.

Officials say a clerk was killed at this store several years ago by another man trying to steal a can of beer. 

While the murder rate in the Heights is down, burglaries are up nearly 40 percent.

“You’ve gotta be very suspicious and now you’ve got to be very careful in the neighborhood,” said Santa Iturralde. He’s a customer.

The Conoco service station sits on a corner next to a couple of popular bars that have opened up in the last couple of years. The legendary Fitzgerald’s club sits right across the street. 

A clerk at the store Thursday said he’s got some really cool customers and knows many of them by name. He even gives some of them credit when they can’t pay for gas or cigarettes.

But he said things have been changing in the neighborhood over the past couple of years. The store was recently broken into, and the cash register was smashed open. 

There have been several other robberies and home burglaries in the area; recently, vandals broke out the windows of several business in the area.

The Heights has been in transition for years now.

There are new bars and $400,000 homes, but along with the growth though comes pain.

Just Ask store clerk Tony Vong. “It was kind of quiet for a year or two and then the crime rate started coming up again.”

The same can be said of many Houston neighborhoods.

In the Heights though certain crimes outpace the rest of Houston.

The beauty that attracts so many people here, it seems, also attracts the bad guys.