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.