Chuck Finder / Pittsburgh Post- Gazette

BUFFALO, N.Y. – What demons chased him 411 miles from home?

What made him drive his pickup truck 100 miles per hour the wrong way down the westbound lanes of New York’s deadliest toll road?

Why did he never once, in 37 miles of high-speed pursuit, stop for the state trooper tailing him with lights flashing and siren wailing?

Why did he have $2,600 in cash, and would it have bought him peace?

Why, at the start of this fatal, Sept. 30 morning, did this frightening, bearded man offer cash and a crucifix to two strangers? Why did he beg them to take their children to higher ground?

And where exactly was he going like a bat out of hell on that New York State Thruway also known as Interstate 90?

“There are a number of questions,” Troop T Capt. Donald Faughnan said from behind an office desk that includes a Buffalo Bills mini-helmet signed in gold ink by former stars Andre Reed and Thurman Thomas. He went ahead and answered one. “Does it appear he was trying to commit suicide? It does not.

“When you consider what else he could have hit or who else could have been hurt, it could have been much worse. But it wasn’t his intent.”

What was?

Maybe, somewhere between the sudden rush of religious rebirth and the agitated state that had him convinced evil would pour through the storm-damaged hole in his Ross bedroom roof, no reason existed that Thursday morning behind the wheel for Justin Conrad Strzelczyk.

Maybe the man – once an exemplary Steelers offensive lineman, a Harley Davidson-riding, guitar-picking bon vivant – wasn’t really that same man after all. Maybe, as his ex-wife put it, this 36-year-old no longer resembled the fellow his friends and family knew, although on the last night of his life he appeared to try to repent to them all.

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