Jan. 15 – A jury deliberated less than two hours before finding an 83-year-old Clark County man guilty of murder and claimed self-defense for shooting an Uber driver nearly two years ago because he believed she was trying to rob him after scammers tricked them.
William J. was convicted. Brock was charged Wednesday evening in Clark County Common Pleas Court with three counts of murder and single counts of assault and kidnapping in the death of 61-year-old Lou Letha Toland Hall in suburban Columbus.
She was shot six times about 11:20 a.m. on March 25, 2024, in the driveway of Brock’s home in the 7000 block of South Charleston-Clifton Road in Madison Twp. She was airlifted to Kettering Health’s main campus, where she died during surgery.
Judge Douglas Rastadter ordered Brock’s bail revoked. Deputies handcuffed him and led him out of the courtroom. He will remain jailed awaiting his sentencing hearing on January 21.
Hall’s family and friends embraced after the sentencing but declined to comment.
“Both families have lost loved ones because of this, and there are no winners here,” Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll said after the sentencing. “The really sad part about this is that we know that the crooks, the people who started this, have not been brought to justice. Hopefully one day the FBI will bring these people to justice and we will be able to prosecute them here in Clark County for what they did.”
On the morning of March 25, Brock received a phone call from someone claiming to be the attorney for a friend’s grandson who needed $12,000 cash for bail after he was involved in a crash with his truck that killed a pregnant woman, Brock’s defense attorney, John Paul Rion, said Monday during opening arguments.
Brock believed the story and got the money he was supposed to give to a woman they identified as Hall in a black sedan at the courthouse in Springfield, Ryon said. In other calls, Brock also spoke with someone claiming to be a judge. During a call in which Brock spoke to the person claiming to be the grandson, he asked about his last name and the type of truck he drives. The man on the line gave close but not exact answers.
“This is where it really changed,” Ryon said. “At that point, the phone is handed to another person. And that person starts screaming at Bill, threatening to kill him, threatening to kill everyone in his family, saying the black car is now in your driveway, and we have drones over your property, watching.”
He added that the person on the line told Brock he would send someone to kill him if he didn’t get a call from Hall saying she had money.
When Hall got out of the black Acura sedan, she walked down a breezeway marked “No Trespassing” to a back porch and through a slightly ajar storm door into an office space and told Brooke, “I’m here for the eviction,” Ryon said, which was confirmation to Brooke that she was part of the scam.
Brock approached Hall with a .22-caliber handgun and demanded that she give him her cell phone.
It was not self-defense when he blocked Brooke Hall from leaving and shot her when she “posed no immediate harm or danger to him,” Clark County Assistant Prosecutor Kadoni Scott told the jury during his opening statements.
“Objectively speaking, a reasonable person would not shoot a helpless woman multiple times to protect themselves from the words of a crook,” Scott said. “An action does not justify killing another person, because words scare him?”
Dashcam video from Hall’s car shows her walking backwards and screaming for help while Brock said he would shoot her in the leg if she didn’t give him her phone. He then shot her in the leg and tried to stop her from leaving. At some point during the struggle, she slammed the car door on his head, causing Brock to suffer lacerations that required stitches to his head and ear before he shot her again.
Brock called 911 after shooting Hall multiple times.
In the call to the jury, Brock identified himself as the shooter. As he spoke to a dispatcher about the shooting and fraud, Hall could be heard in the background saying, “Help me,” “Help me, please.”
Brock also faces a civil suit for wrongful death, filed in March 2025 on behalf of Hall’s estate, alleging that Brock and those defrauding him are responsible for her death.