He was homeless in L.A. Now, he's accused of hurling racist slurs at a 'Today' host

He was homeless in L.A. Now, he’s accused of hurling racist slurs at a ‘Today’ host - Click here to listen to this article - Share via See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred - The Times profiled Andrew Truelove in 2023, capturing his life as a homeless person on the streets of Torrance. - He has been charged with hate crimes for allegedly breaching security and shouting the N-word at “Today” show co-host Craig Melvin. - Truelove, 41, has cycled in and out of the streets, jails, homeless shelters and psychiatric facilities for the last two decades. Andrew Truelove became national news last week after he allegedly breached security at Rockefeller Center and hurled a racist slur at NBC “Today” show co-host Craig Melvin. But his life had been unraveling long before then. At 41 years old, Truelove was unhoused. He had spent the last two decades cycling in and out of the criminal justice system, locked up for crimes that included stealing signs memorializing young victims of the Sandy Hook massacre and grabbing a child outside a school. Truelove was the subject of an in-depth profile in The Times in 2023, capturing his life as a homeless person on the streets of Torrance as he tried to obtain housing, food stamps and healthcare. Now, a picture is emerging of his path from Los Angeles to New York, where he is accused of hate crimes in an incident that unsettled “Today’” show staffers already reeling from the kidnapping of host Savannah Guthrie’s mother. Crisscrossing the country — from his hometown in Virginia to California, Florida and Maryland — Truelove moved between the streets, jails, homeless shelters and psychiatric facilities. In recent months, he ventured underground, sleeping in New York City’s subway tunnels, according to his half-sister, who requested anonymity to speak freely about her younger brother. Truelove told her he preferred living in a subway tunnel to being on the street, because people didn’t bother him down there. He didn’t mind the rats. “He’s very sick and very mentally ill,” his half-sister said, noting that he suffered from schizophrenia but refused to take his medication. Truelove was arraigned Friday on charges of burglary and menacing in the third degree as hate crimes. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison. According to the criminal complaint, Truelove sneaked into a restricted area of the Rockefeller Plaza lobby just before 9 a.m. on July 16, following an employee who used an identification card to swipe in. At the bottom of a stairwell, the complaint alleges, Truelove spotted Melvin and called out his name. “Where is Roker?” he asked, referring to “Today” weather anchor Al Roker. Truelove then took steps toward Melvin, the complaint said. He told him: “You’re a n—.” After he was arrested, Truelove allegedly told Melvin: “I always wanted to call a Black famous person the N-word.” Truelove’s attorney, Lawrence Gerzog, did not respond to requests for comment. Truelove’s mental illness, his half-sister said, made it difficult for him to perform basic tasks, such as getting a job, paying bills or staying housed. It also fueled his irritability and erratic behavior, she said. His half-sister said he described negative interactions with Black people he encountered while living on the streets. She said she reminded him that he had also had many positive experiences with Black people, including two who helped him while he was homeless. Truelove grew up in Norfolk, Va., and attended Norfolk Collegiate School, an elite private day school. Later, he said the bullying he experienced there might have caused his “behavior difficulties.” Not long after graduating from high school, he started getting into trouble. He was dismissed from the University of Virginia in 2003, he later testified in one of his criminal cases, for threatening his dorm mates and campus workers. At 18, Truelove was charged with making threats via telephone and found guilty of misdemeanor assault. At 21, he grabbed an 8-year-old girl by the straps of her backpack while wielding a wrench. A judge sentenced him to four years in prison for abduction, noting that his mental health problems likely played a role. In a statement published in the Virginian-Pilot, Truelove said he drove to Granby High School in Norfolk because he thought bullies were threatening the school. He said he encountered the girl there and “took hold of” her backpack strap to indicate that she should return to a safe spot, “as he wanted a clear area ... to threaten bullies if he found any.” “At no point did I touch the girl except as above, nor did I drag or push her,” he said, adding: “The ‘abduction’ business is a complete fraud.” In the statement, he said he had been under psychiatric care for more than two years. Andrew Truelove arrived in Los Angeles with big dreams. A month later, he was sleeping in the parking lot behind a Torrance shopping center. On the witness stand in 2010, the Virginian-Pilot reported, Truelove said he gained 100 pounds in two months after doctors prescribed psychotropic medications. Anger about his weight gain and reluctance to take medications, he argued, led him to Granby High School. A psychiatrist who examined Truelove testified that he had symptoms of bipolar disorder, including depression and hallucinations. “All of the anger and violence,” his attorney said in court, “is in Andrew’s mind.” Truelove soon came to law enforcement’s attention again in Virginia. In 2012, he pleaded guilty to trespassing on church and school property. Over the next few years, he was charged with multiple counts of disorderly conduct, trespassing and violating probation. In 2013, he was charged with throwing a missile — which he later told the Times was a traffic cone — at a moving vehicle. Increasingly, his mind was preoccupied with extremist views and conspiracy theories, including secret government cabals and false-flag operations. By 2014, Truelove had come to believe that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., never happened. He confessed to stealing two signs memorializing the victims at playgrounds in New Jersey and Connecticut and was sentenced to at least a year behind bars. When Truelove arrived in Los Angeles in April 2023, he had dreams of building a website and maybe a social media empire. He spent a few days at Slab City, an off-the-grid community in Imperial County, then headed to Silicon Valley and San Francisco for several days in an unsuccessful attempt to get the site MyLifeStory.com off the ground. On May 14, he rode an Amtrak train back to L.A. and made his way to Torrance, which he had previously visited to see where scenes from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” were filmed. He spent his nights in a sleeping bag behind a shopping center as he attempted to obtain social services and find housing. After being turned down multiple times, he secured a bed at a shelter in Wilmington, where he stayed for about a week before being kicked out for repeatedly breaking the rules. He was also kicked out of a shelter in San Pedro after telling an employee that he wanted to kill people who harmed him when he was a child, which he said contributed to his PTSD and mood disorder. After The Times published the article about his experiences as an unhoused person, a shelter on Skid Row offered him a bed, then helped him get back to Virginia. In October 2023, Truelove pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of destruction of property in Virginia and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. He called a Times reporter during his incarceration and said he had been arrested for damaging a bench near the beach shortly after his return. His half-sister said he then traveled to Miami, thinking it would be a good place to stay through the winter. But he found the city inhospitable to the homeless, she said, and was unable to secure housing or any services. On Dec. 30, 2023, the Doral Police Department arrested Truelove, and he was charged with one misdemeanor count of criminal mischief resulting in $200 or less in property damage. Five days later, he was arrested again, this time on a misdemeanor charge of petty theft. His half-sister said he stole something from a 7-Eleven in front of a cashier, hoping to end up in jail so he could avoid the day-to-day challenges he faced on the streets. Truelove pleaded no contest to both Florida charges. His half-sister said he spent several months behind bars, after which she paid for him to take a bus to Baltimore, where he checked into an inpatient psychiatric facility for a month before being kicked out. “He had such a nice place to live and people to be with, and he just blew it,” she said. “He’s sick. He doesn’t belong out in public out on the streets.” Not long afterward, Truelove traveled to New York City, where his half-sister said he spent time in multiple shelters and psychiatric facilities. Last year, he checked into a psychiatric facility, his half-sister said, and seemed to be doing well. But after four months, she said, he got into “an altercation” and spent several months in jail. In the 23 years since he graduated from Norfolk Collegiate High School, Truelove has accumulated more than 40 charges and citations. They include several in New York over the last 14 months: criminal trespassing, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and third-degree assault with intent to cause injury. One of the charges, his half-sister said, involved slamming his hand on the hood of an NYPD van that was blocking traffic in Times Square. Recently, Truelove told his half-sister that he had a mental health status exam in Brooklyn. She said that after he spoke with a woman at a desk for 15 minutes, he was denied assistance. Last Friday, Truelove did not enter a plea at his arraignment in a New York criminal court. A spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said the judge set bail at $10,000 and issued a full temporary order of protection for Roker and Melvin. If Truelove ends up in prison for a long stint, his half-sister figures, he will at least get a bed and three meals.