Life and death in a Snyder County ditch

By Damian Gessel
The Daily Item

July 13, 2008 12:37 am

— SELINSGROVE -- One generous blue-skied May afternoon, a young woman parked her car across from the patch of grass and weeds Joseph Farrell came to call home.
She crossed the street, a paper-wrapped sandwich in her hand, and bent down to the ditch.
"I thought I'd bring you this," she said. "In case you get hungry."
Farrell stared up at her. A smile lifted his sunburned lips. He'd by then been living along the side of the road, a few hundred feet away from a Sheetz gas station, for more than a month. All his belongings -- his guitar, his picture albums, his Bible, his CD player, his bicycle, the tattered scrap of silver insulation he used as a poncho and blanket -- were heaped in a pile atop the matted grass.
"Thank you, sweetie, but I can't take this," Farrell told the woman. "I'm waiting for my honey to come back to me and it just wouldn't be right."
Like so many other of the nation's homeless, Farrell was likely mentally ill. He fervently believed he was a prophet, sent here to spread his own apocalyptic brand of religion.
For reasons he didn't explain, his girlfriend, Tina, had left him. He spent his days on the side of the road, the words "Joe and Tina" emblazoned in electrical tape on the front of his sweatshirt, waiting for his girl to return.
In his world, a gift from a woman -- even a sandwich -- could throw the universe out of balance and blow a curse on his chances to get Tina back.
"Well, just in case," the young woman said, confused now, placing the sandwich on the ground beside Farrell. It would remain there, uneaten.
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There are more than 700,000 homeless in the United States, thousands in Pennsylvania alone. A third of those suffer from some form of mental illness.
In October of 2007, Estelle Richman, Secretary of the Department of Public Welfare, testified before the state Senate Health and Welfare Committee that Pennsylvania's mental health procedures laws are "not working well."
"(Pennsylvania law is) not helping people get the treatment and services they need in times of crisis," she said as part of her sponsorship for Senate Bill 226, a still unpassed piece of legislation seeking better mental health outpatient practices.
Richman and others have argued that, though Pennsylvania law stipulates those with serious mental health issues may be subject to involuntary treatment, the state lacks adequate staff support and housing. There simply aren't enough resources to get everyone help who needs it.
Even with adequate resources, however, there's no guarantee someone like Farrell would receive treatment. The Columbia Montour Snyder Union Mental Health service system cannot force treatment on someone not deemed dangerous to himself or others, and an individual must be identified before intervention can begin.
Selinsgrove State Police had several run-ins with Farrell, citing him for trespassing multiple times and even taking him to jail once.
If Farrell stayed off private property or police received no complaints about him, though, there was nothing they could do, said Selinsgrove State Police Sgt. Sean McGinley. Although he was sleeping just feet from a major road, no one believed Farrell was a danger to himself or others.
"Unless we receive a complaint about it, there's no law against vagrancy," McGinley said, adding that one of his officers even offered to bring Farrell to a homeless shelter. Farrell denied the offer, McGinley explained, taking offense at the idea someone would think him poor and homeless.
"It's difficult to help someone who doesn't want to be helped," McGinley said.
Kurt Entsminger, executive director of the national mental health advocacy group Treatment Advocacy Center, believes involuntary treatment can prevent tragedies like Farrell's from occurring.
"Unless and until Pennsylvania changes its laws and allows for the courts to step in, they won't get the treatment they need to get well," he said.
Entsminger and Richman both believe Pennsylvania should adopt legislation similar to New York's Kendra's Law, which includes court-ordered mental health outpatient treatment provisions for patients who refuse help.
CMSU could not speak about Farrell's specific case due to privacy laws, and phone calls to his family went unanswered.
The Treatment Advocacy Center reports that homeless people with untreated brain disorders frequently suffer fatal accidents caused by impaired thinking. Entsminger on Monday said locals should look at situations like Farrell's to spark legislative change. It's a matter of resources, many attest. If Pennsylvania had the time and funding to seek out people like Farrell -- people who may well have mental illness and thereby may pose a danger to themselves -- homeless fatalities would decrease, some say.
Residents who had noticed Farrell -- the man living alongside the road in Selinsgrove, the one often seen wearing a fisherman's cap and scarf in 70-degree weather -- are left only to guess at his mental state in the early morning hours of June 5, when he stepped in front of a car on a busy highway in Monroe Township, Snyder County.
Farrell was heading north on Routes 11/15 when he walked in front of a car driven by 19-year-old Eric Tanner, of Northumberland, and was killed.
The car struck him head-on. Farrell flew up and smashed into the windshield. His body came to rest on the road side, in a ditch not dissimilar to the one he'd lived in for two months.
n E-mail comments to dgessel@dailyitem.com.

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