Teen charged in death of Good Samaritan

updated 2:15 p.m. ET March 7, 2008

CLAYTON, Mo. - A 19-year-old from Georgia who allegedly stole a tip jar from a suburban St. Louis Starbucks and ran over a Good Samaritan trying to stop the crime was charged in the incident.

Aaron Poisson was charged in St. Louis County with involuntary manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident and theft in the hit-and-run death on Monday.

He was being held at the St. Louis County Justice Center in Clayton on $50,000 bond. Poisson's girlfriend was with him at the Starbucks in Crestwood. She has not been charged, but she remains in custody.

A regular patron at the shop, 54-year-old Roger Kreutz was run over while trying to stop the theft at the Starbucks. He died Wednesday of head injuries.

The Seattle-based company said in a statement that Kreutz "was a longtime regular Starbucks customer whose daily presence will be sorely missed by the many Starbucks partners who knew him."

A single rose, with a note offering prayers, stood in a vase on the coffee shop counter.

Disbelief reverberated throughout Crestwood.

Nate Van Laere, co-owner of the Panchero's Mexican Grill restaurant in the same shopping plaza as the Starbucks, called Kreutz's death "a fluke incident and a real tragedy."

"It just doesn't make any sense," he said of the suspects.

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