Sheriff's deputies have arrested a man suspected of killing a store clerk last week at a 7-11 in Shoreline.

King County prosecutors charged 19-year-old Julian Eduardo Reyes with first-degree murder. He is being held in lieu of $1 million bail.

King County Sheriff spokesman John Urquhart the 19-year-old Shoreline man was arrested Thursday in the shooting death of Ho Viet Ton.

The 49-year-old clerk was killed December 10th. A customer called 911 about 4 a.m. after finding Ton's body just outside the store on NE 165th and 5th Avenue NE.

Investigators say no one saw who pulled the trigger, but they believe the shooting happened just minutes before the customer made the grim discovery.

According to court documents, security camera footage from the 7-11 lead police to Reyes, who had been in the store earlier in the day buying a slurpee, but the exact motive for the killing was unclear.

Ron Conlin of 7-Eleven management says the clerk was well-versed in the company's policy on how to handle confrontations. "It talks about employees not wandering, chasing anybody from the store, not to resist in any fashion," he said of the policy.

But Conlin doesn't believe the fatal incident was a robbery.

"It's an unclear situation, we don't know what the motive was," he said. "We're just hopeful that the video will give us help somewhere along the line, although it was outside the normal scope of the video, the police department's working on getting it enhanced."

Those who knew the Ton said he was a respected man and a generous soul.

"He was always a really nice guy," said customer Keenan French. "Giving people stuff for free. He was always really nice."

Conlin said Ton had been working at the store for at least two years, and working for the company for even longer.