Andrew Truelove made national news last week after he allegedly breached security at Rockefeller Center and hurled a racist slur at NBC's “Today” show co-host Craig Melvin.
But his life had already fallen apart long before.
At 41, Truelove was homeless. He had spent the past two decades in and out of the criminal justice system, locked up for crimes that included stealing signs commemorating the 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 while trying to obtain housing, food stamps and medical care.
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 the staff of the “Today” show, which was already reeling from the kidnapping of host Savannah Guthrie's mother.
May 2023 photo of Craig Melvin in New York.
(CJ Rivera/Associated Press)
Crisscrossing the country, from his hometown in Virginia to California, Florida and Maryland, Truelove moved between streets, jails, homeless shelters and psychiatric facilities.
In recent months, he ventured underground, sleeping in New York City subway tunnels, according to his half-sister, who requested anonymity to speak freely about her younger brother.
Truelove told him that he preferred living in a subway tunnel to being on the street, because people didn't bother him there. He didn't care about the rats.
“He is very sick and 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 third-degree robbery and menacing 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 gain entry.
At the bottom of a staircase, the complaint alleges, Truelove saw Melvin and shouted his name. “Where is Roker?” he asked, referring to “Today” weather anchor Al Roker.
Truelove then took action toward Melvin, according to the complaint. He told him: “You are a…”.
After being arrested, Truelove allegedly told Melvin, “I always wanted to call a famous black person the N-word.”
Truelove's attorney, Lawrence Gerzog, did not respond to requests for comment.
July 2023 photo of Andrew Truelove sleeping in a parking lot in Torrance.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Truelove's mental illness, her half-sister said, made it difficult for her to perform basic tasks, such as getting a job, paying bills or staying home. It also fueled his irritability and erratic behavior, he said..
His half-sister said he described negative interactions with black people he encountered while living on the streets. She said it reminded her 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, Virginia, and attended Norfolk Collegiate School, an elite private day school. Later, he said that the harassment he experienced there could have caused his “behavioral difficulties”.
Shortly after graduating high school, he started getting into trouble.
He was fired from the University of Virginia in 2003 and later testified in one of his criminal cases for threatening his dorm mates and campus workers.
At age 18, Truelove was charged with threatening telephone calls and convicted of misdemeanor assault.
At age 21, he grabbed an 8-year-old girl by the straps of her backpack while holding a wrench. A judge sentenced him to four years in prison for kidnapping, noting that his mental health problems likely played a role.
In a statement published in the virginian pilotTruelove said he drove to Granby High School in Norfolk because he thought bullies were threatening the school.
He said he met the girl there and “grabbed” the strap of her backpack to signal that she should return to a safe place, “as he wanted a clear area… to threaten the bullies if he found any.”
“At no time did I touch the girl except as stated above, nor did I drag or push her,” he said, adding: “The 'kidnapping' business is a complete fraud.”
In the statement, he said he was under psychiatric treatment for more than two years.
On the witness stand in 2010, the Virginia pilot reportedTruelove said he gained 100 pounds in two months after doctors prescribed him psychotropic medications. He argued that anger over his weight gain and his reluctance to take medication drove him to Granby High School.
A psychiatrist who examined Truelove testified that he had symptoms of bipolar disorder, including depression and hallucinations.
“All the anger and violence,” his lawyer said in court, “is in Andrew's mind.”
Truelove soon caught the attention of authorities in Virginia again. 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 violation of probation. In 2013, he was accused of launching a missile (which he later told the Times was a traffic cone) at a moving vehicle.
His mind was increasingly preoccupied with extremist views and conspiracy theories, including secret government conspiracies and false flag operations.
In 2014, Truelove had come to believe that the Mass shooting in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, never happened. He confessed to stealing two signs commemorating 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 dreamed of building a website and perhaps a social media empire.
He spent a few days in Slab City, an isolated community in Imperial County, then headed to Silicon Valley and San Francisco for several days in an unsuccessful attempt to get the MyLifeStory.com site off the ground.
On May 14, he took an Amtrak train back to Los Angeles and headed to Torrance, which he had previously visited to see where scenes from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” were filmed.
He spent nights in a sleeping bag behind a shopping center while trying to obtain social services and find housing.
After being turned away several times, he got a bed at a shelter in Wilmington, where he stayed for about a week before being kicked out for repeatedly violating the rules.
He was also kicked out of a shelter in San Pedro after telling an employee that he wanted to kill people who had hurt him as a child, which he said contributed to his post-traumatic stress disorder and mood disorder.
After The Times published the article about his experiences as a homeless person, a shelter on Skid Row offered him a bed and then helped him return to Virginia.
In October 2023, Truelove pleaded no contest to misdemeanor destruction of property in Virginia and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. He called a Times reporter during his imprisonment and told him that 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 spend the winter. But he found the city inhospitable to homeless people, he said, and he couldn't get housing or any services.
On December 30, 2023, the Doral Police Department arrested Truelove and he was charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief resulting in $200 or less in property damage.
Five days later, he was arrested again, this time on a misdemeanor charge of petit larceny. 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 him to take a bus to Baltimore, where he was admitted to 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 ruined it,” she said. “He's sick. He shouldn't be out in public on the streets.”
Not long after, Truelove traveled to New York City, where her half-sister said she spent time in multiple shelters and psychiatric facilities.
Last year he entered a psychiatric facility, his half-sister said, and seemed fine. But after four months, he said, he had “an altercation” and spent several months in prison.
In the 23 years since graduating from Norfolk Collegiate High School, Truelove has racked up more than 40 charges and citations. They include several in New York over the past 14 months: breaking and entering, 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 her half-sister that she underwent a mental health exam in Brooklyn. She said that after speaking with a woman at a desk for 15 minutes, she was denied assistance.
Last Friday, Truelove pleaded no contest at his arraignment in New York criminal court. A spokesman for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office said the judge set bail at $10,000 and issued a full temporary protective order for Roker and Melvin.
If Truelove ends up in prison for a long period, her half-sister estimates she will at least have a bed and three meals.
