On the morning of March 25, 2024, an unsuspecting Uber driver named Lo-Letha Toland-Hall drove to a house near Columbus, Ohio, to pick up a package. She had no idea that the 81-year-old man who lived there had just received a series of phone calls from scammers who had threatened to kill him if he did not give the woman coming to his house $12,000 in cash.
When Ms. Toland-Hall, 61, came to the door, the man, William J. Brock, confronted her at gunpoint and then shot her six times, killing her.
He claimed he was acting in self-defense because he feared he was going to be killed, but dash-camera video from Ms. Toland-Hall’s car showed her backing away from Mr. Brock and begging for her life.
Mr. Brock, who is now 83 and was convicted of murder last month, was sentenced on Monday to 21 years to life in prison.
The sentencing was originally scheduled for Friday but was postponed when Mr. Brock’s lawyer fainted in court. The scammers have not been arrested or identified.
Mr. Brock, a farmer, testified last month about the disturbing phone scam that targeted both him and Ms. Toland-Hall, drawing them together in a deadly encounter.
He was at his home in Clark County, Ohio, he said, when he received a call from people who were claiming to be a lawyer and a judge. They told him his grandson had hit a pregnant woman with his truck and they needed $12,000 in cash to bail him out of jail that day because the judge was going on vacation.
They gave him a purported case number, which he wrote down in a notebook. Mr. Brock also spoke to someone he believed was his grandson, he said, based on the fear in the voice.
After a long time on the phone, the ruse began to unravel when Mr. Brock asked the scammers for his grandson’s full name and the call went silent, he said.
Mr. Brock then asked what kind of truck his grandson was driving, and the scammers said it was a Ford pickup. Mr. Brock knew his grandson drove a semitrailer. He told the people on the phone they had the wrong man, and the call immediately took a menacing turn, he said.
“A real, loud, vicious-sounding voice started shouting, and telling me my time is up,” he said.
The caller vowed to kill Mr. Brock and his family if he did not give the woman who was sitting in a car outside his house $12,000, he said. The caller assured Mr. Brock that he would follow through on the threats if the woman in the car called to say she had not gotten the money.
“This is not a game,” the caller told Mr. Brock, he said.
Ms. Toland-Hall had been dispatched to Mr. Brock’s house by the same scammers and told to pick up a package, according to court documents. When she went to Mr. Brock’s door, he said, he pointed a gun at her and demanded she give him her phone.
He said he feared he would be killed if she called the people who were menacing him on the phone.
“I was scared to death at that time I was going to be killed,” he testified in court.
On the dash-camera video from Ms. Toland-Hall’s car, Mr. Brock can be seen pointing a revolver at Ms. Toland-Hall and following her as she walks away from him toward her car, her face stricken with fear.
“Sir, I’m here to pick up a package,” she says. He replies, “Yeah, I know what you’re after.”
He threatens to shoot her in the head and she begs him not to. He demands to know who she is working for and she explains to him that she works for Uber.
Mr. Brock refused to let Ms. Toland-Hall drive away, shot her six times and called 911, prosecutors said. When the authorities arrived, they treated Ms. Toland-Hall in the driveway and flew her to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
One of the scammers called Mr. Brock on his phone as the police were on the scene. A detective answered that call and recorded the conversation with the scammer, who claimed that he was a police officer, and added, “You’re going to be in trouble,” according to body-camera footage.
A grand jury indicted Mr. Brock on murder, assault and kidnapping charges in April 2024. At the trial last month, Kadawni Scott, a Clark County assistant prosecutor, said that Mr. Brock’s fear did not justify his actions.
“Objectively, a reasonable person would not kidnap and ultimately murder a defenseless person because they were scared,” Mr. Scott told the jury.
Ms. Toland-Hall’s two younger sisters and her son said in an interview that she was a devoted churchgoer who was very close to her family and loved cooking and baking sweet potato pies, cookies and cakes.
Mario Hall, her son, said he spoke to her almost every day and had spent two hours with her on FaceTime the day before she was killed. She was making one of his favorite meals, peppered steak.
“This loss has altered me, and it’s something that I’ve been forced to carry for the rest of my life,” Mr. Hall said in court on Monday. “There’s nothing like living life after losing the person who gave you life.”
After Mr. Brock was convicted last month, Daniel P. Driscoll, the Clark County prosecutor, voiced frustration that the scammers had not been arrested.
“Both families have lost loved ones because of this, and there are no winners here,” he said, according to The Springfield News-Sun. “The really sad part about this is that we know that the scammers, the folks who started this, haven’t been brought to justice. And hopefully one day the F.B.I. will bring those folks and we’ll be able to prosecute them right here in Clark County for what they did.”
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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