1 month ago
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The remains of a Pennsylvania woman who fell into a sinkhole were recovered Friday, four days after she went missing while searching for her cat, a state police spokesperson said.
Trooper Steve Limani said the body of 64-year-old Elizabeth Pollard was sent to the coroner’s office of Westmoreland county near Pittsburgh for an autopsy after rescuers used machinery to bring her to the surface.
Limani told reporters Pollard was found at about 11am approximately 30ft (nine meters) underground, some 12ft (four meters) from the opening of the sinkhole. Limani said Pollard apparently fell onto a cone-shaped pile of debris created by the crumbling mine, then rolled or otherwise moved toward the south-west to where her body was recovered.
The autopsy may help determine whether Pollard was killed by the fall, Limani said.
Pollard was last seen four days earlier near the sinkhole, above a shuttered coal mine. The sinkhole was reported to have opened directly above the abandoned mine.
The search for Pollard began on Monday after her family reported she went missing while searching for Pepper, her lost cat. Searchers quickly focused on the sinkhole that may have only recently opened up in the village of Marguerite. The sinkhole was reported to have a manhole-sized surface gap.
“The sinkhole, it appears that it was most likely created during the time while, unfortunately, Miss Pollard was walking around,” the Pennsylvania state trooper Steve Limani told ABC affiliate WTAE-TV. “There is no evidence of any time where that hole would have been here prior to her deciding to walk around looking for her cat.”
A challenging excavation has been ongoing at the site of the 70-year-old abandoned coal mine.
Shortly after Pollard went missing, authorities were able to locate her five-year-old granddaughter in her parked car near the sinkhole. Despite being in freezing temperatures for about 12 hours, the girl was unharmed.
Axel Hayes, Pollard’s son, said a state trooper told him and other family members that her body had been found.
“I was hoping for the best, I really was,” Hayes said in a phone interview with the Associated Press. “I was hoping she was still alive, maybe in a coma or something. I wasn’t expecting all of this.”
Mike O’Barto, the chairperson of the Unity Township board of supervisors, said the tragedy was deeply felt among his friends and neighbors.
“Unity Township is a tight-knit community. We are made of several coal mining towns. And of course, Marguerite’s one of them,” O’Barto said. “And when people suffer, we all suffer. The people of Unity Township are sad today.”
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The Associated Press contributed reporting
