Do you have to sync in order to delete local files?

My Lightroom CC default amount of storage space filled up immediately, and rather than buy more storage, I opted to keep my originals on my hard drive. Now I want to delete files that have only ever been on my hard drive. I have the sync feature "Paused" because I am out of space in the cloud and I didn't want the background process running and taking up network bandwidth. Now my hard drive is getting full. I went to delete files using the command/option/shift/delete key combination. The program gives me a nice message that says the photo is deleted from the lightroom cc grid view. However, when I look into the hidden file that actually contains all the Lightroom photos, the photo is still there and no space is being created on my hard drive. Do I have to sync in order to delete files that only exist on my hard drive? Please don't tell me that the answer is to go in one by one and delete the files by file number, or that I have to buy more storage in order to succesfully sync all the files just to delete them... HELP! Adobe support chat was useless.