The last time she spoke to her son was in a FaceTime cooking lesson. The next day she was the victim of a deadly scam

By Faith Karimi, CNN

(CNN) — Mario Hall last saw his mother on the other end of a FaceTime call, teaching him how to make pepper steak.

She’d propped her phone near the stove in her kitchen in Dublin, Ohio, so he could see the pan. From his home in Columbia, South Carolina, he watched and followed along as she added peppers and seasoned the beef.

“I’d told her I wanted some pepper steak, but I didn’t know how to make it. And that was one of the meals she used to make for me when I was younger,” Hall told CNN this week. “So she was like, ‘well, get on FaceTime and let’s just walk through it.’ ”

By the time Lo-Letha Toland-Hall got to the rice, she told her son he didn’t need help with that, and they said goodbye soon after. It was their final conversation.

The next morning, on March 25, 2024, Toland-Hall was shot to death after becoming ensnared in a scam gone horribly wrong. The 61-year-old worked as a driver for Uber and had gone to an address in South Charleston, Ohio, to pick up a package – not realizing the man who lived there had just received threatening calls.

Thinking she was coming to steal from him, the homeowner confronted Toland-Hall in the driveway with a pistol and shot her as she backed away, pleading for her life.

William Brock, 83, was sentenced this week to 21 years to life for murder, felonious assault and kidnapping in Toland-Hall’s killing. The case reflects the growth of voice scams, fueled by AI, and illustrates how online and telephone scams can sometimes have violent consequences.

Hall traveled to Ohio for the sentencing, where he read a statement describing his love for his mom.

“She was my mother first and foremost, but she was also my best friend,” he said, fighting back tears. Not only did this shatter my entire family, but it has left a hole in my heart that cannot be filled.”

She was drawn into a lie without realizing it

Toland-Hall was an avid baker. Her son often received surprise deliveries of pastries in boxes shipped overnight, especially during the holidays, he said. Apple pie was a particular favorite.

Retired and on her own schedule, Toland-Hall also tended to her backyard garden filled with strawberries, cucumbers and tomatoes.

Before the shooting, she’d been an Uber driver for about a decade, her son said. After working as a tax auditor for years, and later as a bus driver for the regional public transit in Columbus, he said, Uber offered her the flexibility to pursue her passions.

“She was one of those elite Uber drivers where they would send her to locations outside of her normal area for more money,” he said. “They would set her up with pre-planned rides where she didn’t have to turn the app on and wait. It would come to her like the night before and say, hey, do you want these rides?”

On the day of the shooting, Toland-Hall had received a request on the Uber app pick up a package from Brock’s residence, authorities said. She did not know about the scam calls or that the same scammers had summoned her to his address, according to court documents.

Unbeknownst to her, Brock had received threatening calls from a man who claimed his grandson was in danger and demanded he give $12,000 to the driver who was pulling up to his house.

As Toland-Hall arrived, Brock confronted her outside with a gun and shot her six times as she stepped away from him and tried to leave. His attorney described it as self-defense, but prosecutors said she was not armed and posed no threat when he shot her.

The tragic scene was captured on dashcam video from Toland-Hall’s car. Hall said his mother’s final moments replay on a horrific loop in his head.

“Just hearing the pleading and the screams … I know my mom was scared,” he said. “In the video, she’s trying to explain everything, what’s going on. I think about her last moments. I know she’s probably thinking of me. I know that she’s possibly thinking, ‘how did I get to get to this? It’s just hard to really put into words.”

He called his mother’s phone for months after she died

When Hall didn’t hear from his mother the day after their pepper steak cooking session, he worried that something was wrong. He was her only child, and she called him so often that he’d teasingly nicknamed her “smotherer.”

“You take those little things for granted … and then you don’t have them one day,” he said.

For months following the shooting, Hall paid his mother’s phone bill just so he could hear her voicemail greeting. He called her number regularly. Sometimes, he texted her, too. I miss you, he’d say.

“We would talk multiple times a day,” he said. “I still send text messages to that dead number … hoping for a response even though I know that will never happen.”

Mother and son briefly lived together in Charlotte, North Carolina, before Toland-Hall moved to Ohio about two years before the shooting. During their time in Charlotte they checked in with each other throughout the day, a habit they continued long after they moved into their own places.

The evening after their FaceTime cooking session, Hall said he really began to worry when his mom’s boyfriend called asking if he’d heard from her.

He called her friends, two sisters and several locations she’d driven for Uber in the past. No one had heard from her.

The next day, the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office called him and asked if he knew Lo-Letha Toland-Hall. Hearing her name and “coroner’s office” in the same sentence left him speechless. He knew that she was gone, he said.

“My world stopped. And it has kind of been on pause, while I’ve watched everybody else’s world go on since then,” he said.

Hall didn’t learn details about how his mother died until about a week later, when the Montgomery Sheriff’s Office showed him video of the shooting.

“It just hard to really put into words what I felt. It’s something I have to live with now that it’s been broadcasted across the world … I can’t hide from it,” he said.

The scammers haven’t been caught

At his trial last month, Brock testified that he received a call from people who told him his grandson was in a wreck, and they needed money for bail. They gave him a case number to write down, and he spoke to someone who sounded like his grandson, he said.

But when he asked them what car his grandson drove and they answered a Ford pickup, he knew it was a lie. His grandson had a semitrailer, he said.

Brock said that after he began questioning their motives, the callers yelled at him and issued death threats.

Investigators have not released information on the scammers, and nearly two years later no arrests have been made in the case. Hall declined to comment on any details authorities shared with the family.

In the weeks after the fatal shooting an Uber spokesperson told CNN it had banned the account of the individual who ordered Toland-Hall’s Uber to Brock’s house.

On Friday, an Uber spokesperson said the company has provided information to law enforcement to support their investigation and referred additional questions to authorities.

After the guilty verdict in Brock’s trial, Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll told reporters that both families suffered a loss.

“The really sad part about this is that we know there are still criminals out there,” he said. “We know that the scammers, the folks who started this, haven’t been brought to justice.”

He wants to carry on his mom’s legacy of kindness

In his impact statement, Hall described the magnitude of his grief.

“She didn’t get to grow old like William Brock. Instead, she was murdered and now sits on my mantle in an urn,” he said. “Nothing feels the same to me anymore.”

His goal now, he told CNN, is to carry on her legacy of generosity and showing up for loved ones.

“She loved people. She loved peopling. She always took care of everyone — her sisters, she has a slew of nephews and nieces that she was their rock for. Almost like a second mom sometimes,” the 35-year-old said.

“I will continue what she’s left me with … giving out that kindness. She was big on kindness and karma… she believed you always treat people right whether family members or not.”

At her memorial service, he shared that he and his mother shared a favorite song: Mary J. Blige’s “Everything.” The love song exemplified their bond, he said.

“There was nothing that my mom held back from me, and there was nothing that I held back from my mom. We were an open book with each other,” he told CNN.

Hall said that now that Brock’s conviction and sentencing are over he feels like he can finally begin to heal.

“I feel a little lighter now that we’ve got past the hard part … I can now process and start grieving,” he said. “There was a time (when) I couldn’t sleep much.”

The hardest part, he said, has been losing the person he’d call for comfort, advice or help cooking pepper steak. His phone is silent now. But her love lives on, he said.

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