A man who was reported missing in Pennsylvania last month was found walking along the Athens Perimeter dressed in pajamas Monday morning.
Athens-Clarke County police said there was a warrant for the arrest of 26-year-old Adam Farrell of Scranton but that it expired.
A police report did not indicate why the warrant was issued, but according to published reports, Farrell has had previous scrapes with the law in his home state including an arrest three weeks ago for stealing a pizza while claiming he was God.
According to the report, Farrell was found walking along the highway shortly after 7 p.m. Monday, at which time police learned about the warrant and missing person report. Though the warrant expired, police said they were able to get Farrell off of the busy highway by convincing him to go with them to Athens Regional Medical Center to speak with a doctor. The man was then driven to the hospital and left there in the custody of security personnel, according to the police report.
A notice of Farrell being missing was posted May 28 on the Facebook page of the Shine the Light addiction awareness group in Pennsylvania.
According to the post, Farrell was last seen in in Shippenburg. Pa. and was said to be on foot and possibly headed to Virginia or the Carolinas. The posting described Farrell as being “very confused” and “at risk,” and asked the Scranton Police Department be contacted should Farrell be sighted.
The missing notice was posted 11 days after Farrell was arrested for theft in Shippenburg, where he was said to have stolen a pizza from a supermarket. When approached by an employee about whether he planned to pay for the pizza, Farrell reportedly replied he did not because he “was God and everything was his.”
When police found Farrell eating the pizza at a picnic table, he told them he was God and called them the devil, according to reports that were widely published by Pennsylvania media at the time.
Farrell apparently had previously claimed to be a deity in scrapes with the law.
When arrested in November 2014 for allegedly causing an alcohol-related disturbance at a bar in Carbondale, Pa., Farrell “compared himself to Jesus Christ, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Tupac Shakur,” the Carbondale News reported.
Follow Criminal Justice reporter Joe Johnson at www.facebook.com/JoeJohnsonABH or www.twitter.com/JoeJohnsonABH.