The case for the defense

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Attor­ney lays out self-defense case for man accused of murder
Wil­liam Brock is accused of shoot­ing Uber driver.
Defendant William Brock listens to opening arguments in his murder trial. The 83-year-old first shot Hall in the leg while demanding her cell phone, believing that she was involved in a scam to get him to hand over $12,000. Brock called 911 after shooting Hall multiple times and admitted he was the shooter.
Springfield News-Sun
By Jen Bal­duf
14 Jan 2026

A murder trial is under­way for an eld­erly man who admit­ted he fatally shot an Uber driver nearly two years ago because he reportedly believed she was try­ing to rob him after scam­mers deceived them both.

Wil­liam J. Brock, 83, is charged in Clark County Com­mon Pleas Court with three counts of murder and single counts of felo­ni­ous assault and kid­nap­ping in the death of 61-year-old Lo-letha “Letha” Toland-hall of Dub­lin in sub­urban Colum­bus.

She was fatally shot around 11:20 a.m. March 25, 2024, in the drive­way of Brock’s house in the 7000 block of South Char­le­ston-clifton Road in Madison Twp. She was flown to Ket­ter­ing Health Main Cam­pus, where she died in sur­gery.

Dur­ing open­ing argu­ments Monday in Judge Douglas Rastat­ter’s courtroom, Assist­ant Clark County Pro­sec­utor Kadawni Scott told jur­ors that Brock pre­ven­ted her from leav­ing and fired six rounds at Hall, who “presen­ted no harm or imme­di­ate danger to him.”

“Object­ively, a reas­on­able per­son would not shoot a defense­less woman mul­tiple times to pro­tect them­selves from words of a scam­mer,” Scott said. “The act doesn’t jus­tify the act of tak­ing a life of another, because words scared him?”

Defense attor­ney Jon Paul Rion told jur­ors dur­ing his open­ing state­ments that Brock was the vic­tim of a soph­ist­ic­ated, pos­sibly inter­na­tional “organ­ized crime ring” under invest­ig­a­tion by the FBI in which his and his fam­ily’s lives were threatened.

The morn­ing of March 25, 2024, Brock received a call from a per­son claim­ing to be a law­yer for the grand­son of a friend who needed $12,000 cash for bail after he was involved in a crash with his truck that killed a preg­nant woman, Rion said.

Brock believed the story and got the cash he was sup­posed to give to a woman they iden­ti­fied as Hall in a black sedan at the court­house, Rion said. In fur­ther calls, Brock also spoke with someone claim­ing to be a judge. Dur­ing a call in which Brock talked to the per­son claim­ing to be the grand­son, he asked for his last name and type of truck he drives. The man on the line provided close, but not accur­ate answers.

“This is where it really changed,” Rion said. “At that point, the phone gets handed to some­body else. And this per­son starts scream­ing at Bill, threat­en­ing to kill him, threat­en­ing to kill every­one in his fam­ily, and say­ing the black car is now in your drive­way, we have drones above your prop­erty, watch­ing.”

The per­son on the line told Brock that he would send someone to kill him if he didn’t receive a call from Hall that she had the money, he said.

When Hall got out of the black Acura sedan, walked through a breeze­way marked “no tres­passing” to the back porch and through a storm door that was slightly ajar into an office space and told Brock, “I’m here for the pack­age,” Rion said this was con­firm­a­tion for Brock that she was part of the scam.

“She well may be a very inno­cent vic­tim,” he said.

“But there are some facts that don’t make sense,” he added, includ­ing that the scam­mer seemed to have Hall’s inform­a­tion before con­tact­ing Brock and that she was com­ing from the Colum­bus area.

Brock approached Hall with a .22 caliber pis­tol and deman­ded she give him her cell­phone, which Rion said was to buy him some time to pre­vent her from mak­ing that call.

A dash­cam video from Hall’s car shows her walk­ing back­ward, yelling for help as Brock said he would shoot her leg if she did not give him her phone. He then shot her leg and reportedly tried to pre­vent her from leav­ing. At one point dur­ing a scuffle she closed the car door on his head, which led Brock to suf­fer lacer­a­tions requir­ing stitches to his head and ear before he shot her fur­ther times.

Brock called 911 after shoot­ing Hall mul­tiple times.

In the call played for the jury, Brock admit­ted he was the shooter. As he was talk­ing to a dis­patcher about the shoot­ing and scam, Hall could be heard in the back­ground say­ing, “help me,” “help me, please.”

Clark County Sher­iff ’s Sgt. Den­ise Jones test­i­fied that she respon­ded to the shoot­ing to assist invest­ig­at­ors. She took pho­tos of Hall that showed at least four gun­shot wounds, includ­ing those to her leg, sternum and mid­sec­tion.

She also test­i­fied that she had to con­vince Brock to get his injur­ies treated. At the hos­pital, Rion said a CT scan revealed brain atrophy and a con­di­tion that affects the abil­ity to pro­cess inform­a­tion that can hap­pen as a per­son ages.

The scam­mers called 20 times fol­low­ing the shoot­ing, Rion said, appar­ently want­ing to know what was going on. A detect­ive who answered at one point reportedly was bul­lied into giv­ing inform­a­tion and told the scam­mer that Brock was speak­ing to law enforce­ment officers. In addi­tion, Rion said the threat is ongo­ing. On Dec. 16, 2024, an email was sent to his office, pur­portedly from the scam­mer, say­ing that he would be glad to take his life if he wins this case.

Brock remains free on $200,000 bond.

https://www.pressreader.com/usa/springf ... 2297250285

An odd report. The defense attorney appears to have delivered the case for the prosecution.