UPDATE: A Milwaukee man has been charged for fatally beating a BP gas station employee with a baseball bat on January 5.

Derrick Williams was charge with "first degree reckless homicide, use of a dangerous weapon, habitual criminality repeater," a Class B Felony.

If convicted, Williams could be sentenced to 60 years in prison.

A gas station employee on Milwaukee's northwest side was killed Thursday after he tried to stop a man from stealing inside the store.

The altercation happened at the BP Gas Station at the corner of 27th and Lisbon around 9 a.m. Thursday.

According to witnesses, the gas station employee grabbed a bat and chased the shoplifting suspect across the street. At some point, the suspect got a hold of the bat and beat the worker to death on a sidewalk.

"These are just hard working people trying to make a living," neighbor Bakari Horns said. "That's all they are trying to do, is make a living and this happens."

Horns was shocked to find out an employee who tried to stop a shoplifter was killed.

“To shoplift, it’s wrong," Horns said. "To murder someone in the way this happened is totally wrong.”

Alisha Graham works across the street at a hair shop and said customers outside her salon witnessed the clerk running after the shoplifter.

“He (the gas station employee) chased him (the suspect) out with a bat," Graham said. "He threw the bat at him. All of a sudden the person got the bat and beat him to death. Now he's not here anymore.”

People living around the area hope police catch the suspect so he's not able to hurt anyone else.

“I hope you're caught," Horns said. " You come in my neighborhood, interrupting our peace and quiet. You need to be in jail. You need to be locked up.”

Police have only said they are looking for a male suspect.

A spokesperson for the Milwaukee Police Department said they do not have any suspect description or surveillance video to release at this point in time.