Man, 83, Sentenced After Killing Uber Driver He Mistakenly Thought Was Trying to Scam Him By Liam Quinn

An 83-year-old Ohio man who killed an Uber driver he mistakenly thought had tried to scam him was sentenced to 21 years to life in prison.

William J. Brock was sentenced on Monday. Feb. 2 after he was found guilty of murder last month, according to The New York Times and the Springfield News-Sun. His conviction was also reported by the Associated Press.

Brock shot Lo-Letha Toland-Hall six times outside his home in South Charleston, Ohio, in March 2024 after he wrongly believed she was involved in a scam phone call plot.

Prior to the shooting, the AP reported, Brock was on the phone with scammers who demanded that he withdraw $12,000 in order to bail a relative out of jail who they said had been arrested.

Per the Times, once Brock realized that the scammers were lying about the relative, the caller began to threaten him.

The caller reportedly demanded that Brock give the money to the person outside his home. That turned out to be Toland-Hall, who, it turned out, had also fallen victim to the same scammer, investigators said, according to the times.

Toland-Hall, 61, had been sent to Brock’s house to pick up a package, and had no idea about the scam call or the demand for money, the AP reported.

When she arrived at the home, Brock, who reportedly claimed he felt threatened, confronted Toland-Hall with a firearm and held her at gunpoint, threatening to shoot her while she tried to explain she worked for Uber and begged him not to shoot, the Times reported.

Eventually, Brock shot Toland-Hall six times and she was taken to the hospital, where she later died.

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The AP reported that prosecutors said Toland-Hall was unarmed and posed no threat to Brock, who claimed self-defense during his trial.

According to the outlets, Brock was eventually convicted of murder, but the scammers have not yet been caught.

“Both families have lost loved ones because of this, and there are no winners here,” Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll said following the verdict, according to the AP. “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 FBI will bring those folks and we’ll be able to prosecute them right here in Clark County for what they did.”