Inset: William Brock booking photo (Clark County Sheriff’s Office). Background: YouTube screengrab from NBC affiliate WDTN-TV shows Brock, right, pointing a gun at Loletha Hall moments before shooting her multiple times.
A 61-year-old Uber driver, Loletha Hall, is dead after Ohio resident William Brock, 81, allegedly shot her no less than three times in front of his home after both were targeted in a scam call that police say sent an unwitting Hall to her death and led to a murder charge for Brock.
According to statement and incident report from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office released to Law&Crime, Brock was arrested and charged with felony murder in the first degree on April 10 after he turned himself into to authorities following an investigation of the incident that had occurred a little more than a week earlier.
Brock could still face other charges, police said.
The tragedy unfolded around 11:18 a.m. on March 25 when Hall — a driver for Uber for nearly 10 years, according to her son — arrived at Brock’s home in South Charleston. The woman was unarmed and posed “no threats or assault,” police said. Footage from a dashcam inside of Hall’s Acura shows her approaching Brock’s home, getting out of her car and then engaging with Brock and attempting to leave. But Brock trailed her closely, pointing his .22 caliber revolver at her and at one point, taking her phone away from her so she could not make any outgoing calls.
Police and prosecutors say that Hall had only come to Brock’s house after receiving an assignment from Uber to pick up a package there. Hall thought the assignment was legitimate but police said it wasn’t. Officers would later determine that the same caller, or their accomplice, had also contacted Brock that morning by phone and falsely started pressuring him for money in a scam involving an already incarcerated relative.
“Ms. Hall, unfamiliar with the circumstances which had occurred, arrived and made contact with Mr. Brock,” an incident report noted.
Hall made no demands of Brock, according to police and only asked him about the package she was meant to pick up. Brock started making demands about her identity and that’s when he took her phone and refused to allow her to leave. During the encounter, Brock “made no attempts to summon help or call 911 for assistance,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
“Ms. Hall attempted to re-enter her vehicle to leave the property and escape, during which time she was shot by Mr. Brock, and Mr. Brock was injured in the subsequent scuffle at the door of Ms. Hall’s vehicle. Further exchange took place between them, after which Mr. Brock shot Ms. Hall again, and after further exchange, shot her again a third, separate, time,” an incident report stated.
It was only then that Brock called 911.
A police summary of that 911 call said that Brock told police “some Black woman” had come up to his house and that he had been receiving “threatening phone calls all morning.”
The man on the phone, Brock told dispatch while clinging to the gun still in his hand, was telling him he was going to kill him when Hall came knocking on his door at that same moment. Brock told the dispatch officer he didn’t believe the man on the phone was going to kill his family or that the caller had a “drone” on him.
But when dispatch asked Brock if he shot Hall that day, police said he affirmed. Then Brock said that he had shot the woman in her leg first and then in the shoulder. Police later discovered she had been shot three times total. Investigators also said he suffered injuries to his ear and head.
The Clark County Sheriff’s office is now investigating scam calls plaguing Ohio residents and emphasizes that no official or law enforcement agency will ever attempt to collect bail or solicit funds from a person in this way. Extreme caution is urged for senior residents of Ohio, in particular, they said.
An attorney for Brock did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. Online court records show Brock is facing up to 15 years in prison and after being briefly detained last week, he has since bonded out of jail on $200,000. His next hearing is set for April 22.
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