A Pennsylvania coroner’s office said Friday that investigators believe they have located the body of a woman who was last seen four days earlier near a sinkhole above a shuttered coal mine.
Sean Hribal, a deputy coroner in Westmoreland County, said searchers believe they have found the remains of 64-year-old Elizabeth Pollard.
State police Trooper Steve Limani told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that there was massive relief among the search team that Pollard had been found.
“We were running out of options, time and resources,” Limani told the newspaper. “I was getting worried we weren’t gonna find her.”
Axel Hayes, Pollard’s son, said in a brief phone interview Friday that he had not heard from authorities and planned to call his father, Kenny Pollard, to let him know.
Elizabeth Pollard was last seen searching for her cat Pepper on Monday evening near a restaurant less than a kilometre from her home. Pollard’s family reported her missing around 1 a.m. on Tuesday as the temperature in the area dropped below freezing.
The search for her focused on a sinkhole with a manhole-sized surface gap that may have only recently opened up in the village of Marguerite. The sinkhole was above a former coal mine, which last operated about 70 years ago.
Police said they found Pollard’s car parked about six metres from the sinkhole. Pollard’s five-year-old granddaughter was found safe inside the car.
Hunters and restaurant workers who were in the area in the hours before Pollard’s disappearance told police they hadn’t noticed the sinkhole.
State to see whether mine created sinkhole
The effort to find Pollard included lowering a pole camera with a sensitive listening device into the hole, although it detected nothing. Crews removed a massive amount of soil and rock to try to reach the area where they believed the grandmother fell into the nine-metre-deep chasm.
Pollard grew up in Jeanette, about nine kilometres from Unity Township, where she lived for much of her adult life. She previously worked at Walmart and had been married for more than 40 years.
Neil Shader, spokesperson with the Department of Environmental Protection, said the state’s Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation will examine the scene to see if the sinkhole was indeed caused by mine subsidence.
In June, a giant sinkhole in southern Illinois swallowed the centre of a soccer field built on top of a limestone mine, taking down a large light pole and leaving a gaping chasm where squads of kids often play. No one was hurt.
In 2023, a sinkhole that in 2013 fatally swallowed a man sleeping in his house in suburban Tampa, Fla., reopened for a third time, but it was behind fencing and caused no harm to people or property.
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