Brian R. McGee’s path that led him to a remote forest in south-central Pennsylvania was marked by repeated attempts to step up for his family and a battle against mental health challenges.
The mother of two children with McGee opened up to lehighvalleylive.com about his fight nearly a month and a half after he was fatally injured Nov. 2 in what investigators labeled a pedestrian hit-and-run in Buchanan State Forest.
“I’m just looking for answers,” Frances Saez said this week from her home in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. “I’m not going to fight with anybody. I just want justice. Brian deserves justice.”
Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources rangers are investigating the death, with assistance from Pennsylvania State Police troopers and forensics experts.
Cambria County Chief Deputy Coroner Joseph Hribar said Thursday that McGee’s cause and manner of death remain pending the investigation and autopsy results. McGee was 37.
Saez and McGee met at Northampton Area High School, where she said McGee graduated with the Class of 2005. He lost his mother at age 10 and later his stepmother, both to cancer, and his father died in 2012 after a brief battle with multiple sclerosis.
Saez, the oldest of her siblings, took on the care of her brothers when her own father—who had divorced her mother—died of cancer.
Saez and McGee’s first-born arrived in 2009, followed by a second son in 2012.
McGee provided for them, Saez said, but he started acting erratically when the family moved to Florida in 2013 following a reconciliation with Saez’s mother who was living there.
Preferring isolation, McGee would sleep in his car, paranoid about those around him. Known to drink, he was found with drugs in his system during a mental health evaluation that Saez petitioned for, she said. McGee was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
When Saez moved back to the Lehigh Valley area, she had difficulty locating McGee. Eventually, they reconnected after she tracked him down and sent him a care package with a cellphone, prepaid card, clothes and medication.
“We had really good days. Brian was living with me all the way until last year,” she said. “We celebrated our kids’ birthdays, he was here with the kids. We were having good moments, and as long as he took his medication, he was fine.”
Earlier this year, he was living as a transient in south-central Pennsylvania, seeking isolation, Saez said.
Court records show some minor criminal violations — summary offenses — for disobeying a traffic control device and retail theft in Bedford County and trespass in Cumberland County.
On Nov. 3, Saez said she got a call that McGee was critically injured and being treated at Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center in Cambria County.
She drove straight there, arriving around 11 at night, and found him in a coma with facial and head trauma and a broken shin.
He died the following day.
The crash occurred around noon Nov. 2 within Buchanan State Forest, at the intersection of Route 30 and Jerry Road in Brush Creek Township in Fulton County, according to the DCNR.
Investigators have not released a description of a vehicle or anyone sought. They ask anyone with information related to the incident to report it to the Buchanan Forest District Office by calling 717-485-3148 and selecting option 2 to speak to a ranger on duty, or by email to fd02@pa.gov.
Saez said she learned from investigators that a hunter looking for a deer he’d shot found the injured McGee and then waited at the scene until authorities arrived.
Hours earlier, according to what Saez has been able to find out via the investigation, the hunter had found McGee sitting in the gravel road; McGee relayed he was warming up then heading into nearby Breezewood, and the hunter gave him some bottled water and beef jerky.
“My kids are devastated,” Saez said. “And how do you grieve when you don’t know what happened, and this is unclosed?
“The person who did this and the person that caused this harm to Brian is still walking around free,” Saez said. “How do you grieve when you’re hurting, you’re in pain and then you know that this other person is free?”
A DCNR spokesman declined to comment beyond a news release issued Nov. 3 seeking information on the incident and additional details posted by the Buchanan Forest District’s Facebook account relating to McGee’s subsequent death.