[chris]

Sheboygan County prosecutors charged Jeremy Pfister, 32, of Sheboygan, with homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle after his van crashed through a convenience store wall in July 2009 and killed 18-year-old clerk Emily Hughes as she worked the counter, according to authorities.

Pfister had just filled his tank at the store late on July 11, 2009, and was backing the van toward the entrance to pick up his wife, Nicole Pfister, who was inside paying for gas, police said. The van accelerated through the store's front window and pinned Hughes beneath it.

Hughes was trapped under the vehicle and flown by medical helicopter to Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital in Wauwatosa, where she was pronounced dead about an hour after the crash, according to published accounts. Nicole Pfister called 911 as Hughes lay pinned beneath the van.

Jeremy Pfister initially told investigators that a brake failure in his 2008 minivan caused the crash. Days later, he gave police a different account: he said he had moved his child into the back seat, climbed into the passenger side of the van and tried to work the gas and brake pedals with his left foot, according to authorities.

After reconstructing the crash scene, inspecting the van and reviewing store surveillance video, investigators determined Hughes' death was a homicide and filed the negligent-operation charge against Pfister. Wisconsin's homicide-by-negligent-operation-of-a-vehicle statute is a felony that applies when a death results from criminal negligence behind the wheel rather than an intent to kill, distinct from a murder charge.

Friends and classmates held a candlelight vigil outside the boarded-up store two nights after the crash, remembering Hughes as a 2008 graduate of Sheboygan Area Lutheran High School who had just finished her first year at the University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan. She had been filling in for a cashier who quit after an armed robbery at the store a week earlier, friends said at the time.