An 83-year-old man in Ohio who fatally shot an Uber driver he mistakenly believed was part of a scam has been sentenced to 21 years to life in prison.
William J. Brock was sentenced Monday, Feb. 2, after a jury found him guilty of murder last month, according to The New York Times and the Springfield News-Sun. The Associated Press also reported on the conviction.
Prosecutors said Brock shot Lo-Letha Toland-Hall six times outside his home in South Charleston, Ohio, in March 2024 after wrongly concluding she was connected to a fraudulent phone call.
Before the shooting, Brock was speaking with scammers who demanded he withdraw $12,000 to bail a relative out of jail, the AP reported. After Brock realized the story about the relative was false, The New York Times reported that the caller began threatening him.
Authorities said the caller then instructed Brock to hand the money to someone outside his home — a person who turned out to be Toland-Hall. Investigators believe she, too, had been targeted by the same scammers, according to The New York Times.
Toland-Hall, 61, had been dispatched to Brock’s address to pick up a package and had no knowledge of the scam call or any demand for money, the AP reported.
According to The New York Times, when Toland-Hall arrived, Brock confronted her with a firearm, held her at gunpoint, and threatened to shoot as she pleaded with him not to and tried to explain she was an Uber driver. Prosecutors said Brock then fired six times. Toland-Hall was taken to a hospital and later died.
At trial, Brock claimed he acted in self-defense. Prosecutors argued Toland-Hall was unarmed and posed no threat, the AP reported.
Brock was convicted of murder, and authorities have not yet identified or arrested the scammers involved, according to the reports.
“Both families have lost loved ones because of this, and there are no winners here,” Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll said after the verdict, according to the AP. He added that the people behind the scam “haven’t been brought to justice” and expressed hope that the FBI will eventually track them down and they can be prosecuted in Clark County.
